Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Cosmic Bubbles, Pancake Volcanoes & Celebrating 50 Years of ESA

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Cosmic Bubbles, Pancake Volcanoes & Celebrating 50 Years of ESA · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

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Speaker 1: Well, welcome back to another fantastic, wonderful out of this
0:04
Speaker 1: world episode of Space Nuts fifteen. Sack and Guide at
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Speaker 1: the Channel ten nine ignition Space Nuts NYE four three
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Speaker 1: two one Space Nuts as an actual bought it Neil Goods.
0:23
Speaker 1: I'm your host for this summer Heidi compo, and joining
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Speaker 1: me is our stupendous spectacular Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Hello, Fred,
0:34
Speaker 1: how are you doing on this wonderful morning of yours
0:37
Speaker 1: afternoon of mine?
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Speaker 2: Yeah? Pretty good, thank you, Heidi. The sunny shining, It
0:43
Speaker 2: was very foggy first thing. And of course we're not
0:47
Speaker 2: in summer, we're in winter, so you're with us for
0:51
Speaker 2: the whole winter. Today sorry, yesterday is the first day
0:55
Speaker 2: of winter. In Australia, they start the seasons on the
0:59
Speaker 2: first of the month, so the first of June is
1:02
Speaker 2: the first day of winter. And it was a nice
1:04
Speaker 2: day yesterday as well. Typically weather here is cold and sunny,
1:09
Speaker 2: and by cold I mean twelve thirteen fourteen Celsia is
1:14
Speaker 2: something like that up to about Yeah, sixty degrees sixty
1:19
Speaker 2: degrees fahrenheit will be will be cool for us.
1:22
Speaker 1: That's good weather. I think that the sixties the seventies
1:25
Speaker 1: are perfect. When you start getting into the Houston heat
1:28
Speaker 1: and humidity and you're working in the blistering nineties with
1:32
Speaker 1: you know, eighty percent humidity, I think people tend to
1:35
Speaker 1: start not enjoying that as much.
1:37
Speaker 2: No, I understand.
1:40
Speaker 1: So we have some really fun topics today. Today we
1:43
Speaker 1: are looking at all sorts of things from space bubbles
1:48
Speaker 1: to pancake volcanoes. That sounds like we're making a recipe.
1:52
Speaker 1: And we're finishing off with celebrating fifty years of the
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Speaker 1: European Space Agency with some special electures items. So without
2:02
Speaker 1: further ado, let's jump right into today's topics.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, Heidi, and I love this first story partly
2:11
Speaker 2: because it is visually completely inspiring, and I'll point our
2:17
Speaker 2: listeners to the website in a minute, but also because
2:20
Speaker 2: it's research. It's got a cast of the thousands, like
2:24
Speaker 2: many research topics do these days, but it's led by
2:26
Speaker 2: a good friend of mine, Miroslav Miroslav Mirslav Philopovich. Sorry Mirroslav,
2:33
Speaker 2: if you're listening. He's the professor of astronomy and astrophysics
2:37
Speaker 2: at Western Sydney University, and in fact, I have a
2:41
Speaker 2: an honorary appointment with the university. So I know Miroslav well,
2:45
Speaker 2: he's a very able radio astronomer with many really important
2:51
Speaker 2: pieces of work under his belt. But I think this
2:54
Speaker 2: one is not just spectacular from a scientific point of view,
2:59
Speaker 2: but it is incredibly beautiful because what he and in
3:04
Speaker 2: fact I think he made the initial discovery himself, what
3:07
Speaker 2: they've discovered is well, it's been called a cosmic bubble,
3:13
Speaker 2: but it is perfectly circular to our eyes, which means
3:18
Speaker 2: it's probably perfectly spherical if you want to have a
3:21
Speaker 2: look at it. And the news item I was looking
3:25
Speaker 2: at is actually on space dot com, but I think
3:28
Speaker 2: it's been covered by many of the science news outlets
3:31
Speaker 2: and the you know, the title of that space dot
3:36
Speaker 2: com page is a quote from Miroslav, one of the
3:38
Speaker 2: most geometrically perfect and they ask, what is this mysterious
3:43
Speaker 2: sphere deep in the Milky Way galaxy? So what we've
3:46
Speaker 2: got is it comes from a radio image of the
3:50
Speaker 2: sky taken with one of the great new radio telescopes.
3:56
Speaker 2: Here in Australia, an instrument called Askap. Askap is situated
4:03
Speaker 2: in Western Australia at a site which has a long name.
4:07
Speaker 2: It's the Murchison Radio Astronomy Observatory in Yarimana Ilgari Bunderer
4:12
Speaker 2: and the last three words of that name are Wadri language.
4:16
Speaker 2: They are the traditional owners of that site and it's
4:19
Speaker 2: a Wadry expression meaning sharing sky and stars. So it's
4:24
Speaker 2: a very well named observatory site. Now that is where
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Speaker 2: what's called SKA Loow, the Australian half of the Square
4:33
Speaker 2: Kilometer Array Observatores, big new telescope that's currently being built there,
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Speaker 2: and I think we've talked about it before, Heidi, the
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Speaker 2: fact that it's not a steerable dish. This is a
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Speaker 2: telescope that looks like a forest full of Christmas trees,
4:46
Speaker 2: metal Christmas trees which stand there and are steered electronically.
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Speaker 2: It's extraordinary technology. But as well as that, there is
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Speaker 2: a set of I think it's thirty six if I
4:57
Speaker 2: remember rightly, steerable dishes which which form what is called ASCAP,
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Speaker 2: the Australian Square Kilometer ARRA pathfinder, and that was the
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Speaker 2: instrument that Miroslavi and his colleagues used to find this
5:12
Speaker 2: curious objects. They in fact, it was one of the
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Speaker 2: surveys publicly available surveys of the sky, the radio sky
5:20
Speaker 2: that have come from ascap and he spotted because of
5:24
Speaker 2: his eagle eyes in the readouts, he spotted this ring
5:28
Speaker 2: of material. It's got a few oddities about it. First
5:33
Speaker 2: of all, as I said already, it's perfectly spherical. We
5:39
Speaker 2: see it as a circle, but it's almost certainly a
5:41
Speaker 2: sphere because we don't look from any preferred direction. But
5:46
Speaker 2: the other thing is that it only emits its radiation
5:52
Speaker 2: radio wavelengths, and there's just a hint of a visible
5:59
Speaker 2: light coming from from hydrogen, but most of it is
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Speaker 2: radio wavelengths, and that flies in the face of what
6:07
Speaker 2: we know about objects of this kind, because it is
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Speaker 2: probably what's called a supernova remnant, a bubble in space
6:13
Speaker 2: which comes from an exploding star, probably centuries ago, maybe
6:20
Speaker 2: because then quite figured out how big this thing is yet.
6:24
Speaker 2: But an exploding star that's kind of carved a cavity
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Speaker 2: in the gas in which it's immersed, and that gas
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Speaker 2: is very rarefied. It's what we call the interstellar medium.
6:34
Speaker 2: But when you get an explosion, it will carve out
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Speaker 2: that sort of spherical chamber. So that's what they are,
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Speaker 2: assuming it is the kind of important bit I haven't mentioned,
6:49
Speaker 2: which is that they've given it a lovely name, which
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Speaker 2: is Teleos. It is spelt with t e l e iOS,
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Speaker 2: and it's a Greek word meaning perfection, and that's because
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Speaker 2: it is. It's a perfect looking sphere, quite extraordinary.
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Speaker 1: It really is beautiful. It looks like just this cosmic
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Speaker 1: marble floating. But the other interesting thing to me that
7:14
Speaker 1: maybe you can explain a little bit more. I'm sure
7:18
Speaker 1: half of your listeners probably already know this, but some
7:20
Speaker 1: of us don't. But the sphere has this greenish blackish
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Speaker 1: tint to it, but so does all the other matter
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Speaker 1: around it. So what is making up this sphere versus
7:34
Speaker 1: the matter around it that's distinct but looks the same
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Speaker 1: color wise, So.
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Speaker 2: The color that you're seeing is remember we're looking at
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Speaker 2: radio wavelengths, we're not looking at a visible light image,
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Speaker 2: and so the color comes from the processing that has
7:55
Speaker 2: been done to this image, and it's probably there's a
8:02
Speaker 2: color bar. I actually looked at the original paper that
8:04
Speaker 2: gives you a essentially a scale of intensities that refer
8:11
Speaker 2: to the color. So what you're saying is a measure
8:15
Speaker 2: of brightness, and you're absolutely right. The thing is the
8:20
Speaker 2: same color as its background. But what delineates it is
8:23
Speaker 2: this abrupt kind of step from the intensity of the
8:28
Speaker 2: marble itself, if I can call it. That's a really
8:30
Speaker 2: good word, because it looks exactly like that, the step
8:34
Speaker 2: in intensity from that to the background, which is which
8:37
Speaker 2: is a lower intensity, and so it's you know what
8:41
Speaker 2: we're what we're seeing there is the radio data interpreted
8:45
Speaker 2: as color and the greenish is I think that's just
8:50
Speaker 2: one that they've chosen for that level of intensity. That
8:53
Speaker 2: space dot com page that I mentioned earlier has another
8:57
Speaker 2: of it's got the original map, the original idio map.
9:00
Speaker 2: I think that is the one that Misla I've used
9:04
Speaker 2: to find tellios. And you can see that the color
9:07
Speaker 2: is orange. Once again, it's an artificial color, so we're
9:10
Speaker 2: not looking at anything actually astrophysical with that color.
9:14
Speaker 1: So it's not measuring any kind of like a density
9:17
Speaker 1: like a like a ultrasound or anything like that, because
9:20
Speaker 1: I do see different colors around it that I believe
9:24
Speaker 1: would be indicating differences in radio frequencies bouncing off. So
9:29
Speaker 1: for example, that kind of that bright spot in the
9:31
Speaker 1: left corner is not a bright spot of sun reflection
9:36
Speaker 1: in the traditional sense of an image that we would see.
9:39
Speaker 1: What would that bright spot represent in radio imaging?
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Speaker 2: It's that is where if I remember rightly, because the
9:49
Speaker 2: article that I'm looking at doesn't have this, but I
9:51
Speaker 2: did look at the original paper, I think that's where
9:53
Speaker 2: the visible there is a little bit of visible emission,
9:57
Speaker 2: visible light emission. It's the color that we associate with
10:01
Speaker 2: hydrogen because we know that, you know, different elements emit
10:07
Speaker 2: light in different colors when they're excited either by ultraviolet
10:11
Speaker 2: light or electrical particle, you know, electrified particles, And I
10:15
Speaker 2: think that's where the visible light color comes in. You're right,
10:19
Speaker 2: there's a there's a it's almost like a whitish patch there.
10:23
Speaker 2: So I think the greenish stuff is the radio emission.
10:27
Speaker 2: I think you're right too that there are probably different
10:29
Speaker 2: frequencies depicted here, and they too might change the change
10:32
Speaker 2: the color. Because what you can do the same with
10:34
Speaker 2: radio waves as we do with visible light. The reason
10:37
Speaker 2: why we see different colors is that we've see different
10:39
Speaker 2: wavelengths of light. So what you can do with radio radiation,
10:42
Speaker 2: you've got these receivers which are basically giving you different
10:45
Speaker 2: frequencies of radio radio waves, and you can assign colors
10:50
Speaker 2: to them and make an image like this, I think
10:52
Speaker 2: that's probably what's happened.
10:54
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes that makes a lot of sense. I
10:57
Speaker 1: also kind of asked that this is a little bit funny,
10:59
Speaker 1: but I found a comment on that article from a
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Speaker 1: conspiracy theorist who is claiming that this is undoubtedly an
11:08
Speaker 1: altered so he thinks it's a telescope image, and he
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Speaker 1: thinks that they have altered the lens to hide intelligent
11:16
Speaker 1: life that's hiding behind that spot. And so I think
11:20
Speaker 1: that's why sometimes it is just so important for people
11:23
Speaker 1: who don't understand the science to take a step back
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Speaker 1: and just go, Okay, you know, first of all, this
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Speaker 1: is not a telescope image we're looking at. This is
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Speaker 1: a sound radio frequency translated to a visual medium for
11:37
Speaker 1: us to be able to understand what those waves meant.
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Speaker 1: And then for somebody who doesn't understand what that means,
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Speaker 1: they can maybe I don't know, justump to some crazy conclusions.
11:49
Speaker 1: So at the end of the day, it's always so
11:50
Speaker 1: important to understand how we're getting what we're looking at,
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Speaker 1: and then what we're looking at even means. So thank
11:56
Speaker 1: you for clarifying that it does.
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Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting that you mentioned conspiracy theorists, because
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Speaker 2: it does have such a perfect circular feature that it
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Speaker 2: looks artificial. It's not. It's definitely a supern overendant one
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Speaker 2: of these bubbles. But yes, it does look like something
12:14
Speaker 2: that's been made by intelligent life, but you don't believe
12:19
Speaker 2: it has.
12:20
Speaker 1: Well, you know, those pancakes also look pretty circular. Maybe
12:23
Speaker 1: this is a theme in space. Does space like circles?
12:29
Speaker 2: It does, actually, And you've hit the nail on the head, Heidi,
12:32
Speaker 2: because we've got three stories today that all involve circles,
12:36
Speaker 2: and this one is no less spectacular actually than the
12:40
Speaker 2: previous one. So we were talking about very very regular
12:47
Speaker 2: circular features on the planet Venus, and Venus says, I
12:51
Speaker 2: guess most of our listeners know, Heidi, is surrounded by
12:55
Speaker 2: a thick, opaque atmosphere. That means that we can penetrate
13:00
Speaker 2: it very easily. Although I should say that the one
13:04
Speaker 2: of the outstanding features of the Angle Australian Telescope, the
13:08
Speaker 2: telescope that I used to be the astronomer in charge
13:10
Speaker 2: of very early in its history, it actually saw the
13:13
Speaker 2: surface of Venus through those clouds using infrared radiation only
13:17
Speaker 2: a glimpse, but it did see enough of the surface.
13:20
Speaker 2: But the best way to see the surface of Venus
13:22
Speaker 2: unless you land a spacecraft on it, which the former
13:25
Speaker 2: Soviet Union did a number of times in the nineteen
13:28
Speaker 2: eighties and sent us back some pictures of the surface.
13:32
Speaker 2: But the best way to see it from above is
13:35
Speaker 2: by radar, and NASA's Magellan spacecraft back in the nineteen
13:40
Speaker 2: nineties maps the whole of Venus's surface with radar, and
13:45
Speaker 2: so we've effectively got very clear images, quite high resolution
13:49
Speaker 2: images of the surface of Venus, which show mountains and
13:53
Speaker 2: valleys and yes, volcanoes, but they also show these really
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Speaker 2: weird features, the ones that are very very circular, they
14:02
Speaker 2: call pancake domes, and they they actually look more like
14:08
Speaker 2: impact craters, those craters that were so familiar with on
14:12
Speaker 2: the Moon where meteorites and small asteroids the same thing. Yeah, yeah, landed,
14:19
Speaker 2: But they're not. They apparently are tectonic features. They come
14:23
Speaker 2: from volcanism in the planet. They don't look just like pancakes.
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Speaker 2: Have to say, they really.
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Speaker 1: Do almost they almost like with the crust and everything,
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Speaker 1: like they just like the pancake that was just cooked.
14:37
Speaker 1: Maybe we're supposed to take it off the stove just
14:39
Speaker 1: a minute before that's.
14:41
Speaker 2: That's probably right, yes, just before the edge started turning up,
14:44
Speaker 2: which has happened there. So they're not volcanoes in the
14:51
Speaker 2: way that we normally think of one that the common
14:53
Speaker 2: volcanoes that we think off here on Earth are stratovolcanoes,
14:56
Speaker 2: the ones that look like Mount Vesuvius, very conical. Or
14:59
Speaker 2: we've got the shield volcanoes like commanic Are on Hawaii,
15:03
Speaker 2: which are they're called shield volcanoes because they look like
15:06
Speaker 2: a shield. They're flat and with only gentle slopes rather
15:11
Speaker 2: than having you know, very very steep sides. But these
15:14
Speaker 2: are quite different pancake domes. And the reason why they're
15:21
Speaker 2: in the news is that we've never really understood how
15:26
Speaker 2: they've formed. It's thought that it is something to do
15:29
Speaker 2: with pressure underneath the crust of Venus. And we we
15:35
Speaker 2: see these domes volcanic domes on other worlds in the
15:39
Speaker 2: Solar System, and I'm thinking particularly of Series, which is
15:42
Speaker 2: the largest of the asteroid. It's actually asteroid. It's actually
15:45
Speaker 2: a dwarf planet nine hundred kilometers across. Series has regions
15:51
Speaker 2: that look as though they should be a volcano, but
15:53
Speaker 2: there's no crater at the top, and what we're seeing
15:55
Speaker 2: is the something underneath. Underneath the crust of series as
16:00
Speaker 2: welled up and the pressure has caused this elevation of
16:04
Speaker 2: the landscape, so it pushes up this weird looking dome.
16:09
Speaker 2: And that, however, is quite different from what we're seeing
16:14
Speaker 2: on Venus, which our listeners have probably fed up a hearing.
16:17
Speaker 2: Now they look like pancakes, and so the problem has
16:20
Speaker 2: been how are these things formed? And one of them
16:24
Speaker 2: has been studied in detail. It's one of the largest
16:27
Speaker 2: of them. It's ninety miles or one hundred and forty
16:29
Speaker 2: five kilometers in diameter. And again it uses that those
16:34
Speaker 2: radar data that we spoke about. So a group of scientists,
16:39
Speaker 2: and I think they're led from the Georgia Institute of
16:41
Speaker 2: Technology in the USA, they've looked at theoretical models as
16:48
Speaker 2: to what you would need to produce such a curious
16:51
Speaker 2: feature on the surface of a planet like Venus, and
16:55
Speaker 2: they actually have an answer. They say, Okay, it's a
17:00
Speaker 2: particular kind of lava that you need coupled with a
17:06
Speaker 2: surface a crust of Venus, which is particularly pliable. In
17:13
Speaker 2: other words, it's flexible and in fact We've seen other
17:16
Speaker 2: reports recently that suggests that the crust of Venus is
17:19
Speaker 2: not as rigid as the Earth's crust, that it is
17:22
Speaker 2: a bit more flexible. And now it's still pretty stiff
17:25
Speaker 2: compared with the kind of things, you know, bending a
17:27
Speaker 2: piece of paper or something like that, but it's nevertheless
17:31
Speaker 2: more flexible than our crust is. So the numbers that
17:34
Speaker 2: they come up with are pretty spectacular. They need a
17:38
Speaker 2: very very viscous lava, and the report that I've read,
17:45
Speaker 2: which is an article by Ashley Morgan on Daily Galaxy,
17:48
Speaker 2: describes it as being a trillion times thicker than ketchup
17:52
Speaker 2: and twice as dense as water.
17:55
Speaker 1: What is with all the food references.
17:58
Speaker 2: We're doing pretty well with the bubbles and the pancakes
18:01
Speaker 2: and all the rest of it. Anyway, that what that
18:03
Speaker 2: means is you've got a lava that is very very
18:06
Speaker 2: slow flowing. Not you know, as we see volcanoes on
18:11
Speaker 2: Earth where the lava is pouring down down the mountain side.
18:16
Speaker 2: These actually move very slowly hundreds of thousands of years
18:20
Speaker 2: to form a phenomenon like this. And if you mix
18:24
Speaker 2: that with the with the fact that the crust is flexible,
18:30
Speaker 2: then you get a model that actually is capable of
18:34
Speaker 2: simulating these pancake features. And that's quite extraordinary that you
18:40
Speaker 2: can just do that, you know, with computer modeling, but
18:43
Speaker 2: you can actually make something in the computer that matches
18:47
Speaker 2: what we see exactly. And so that is why we
18:51
Speaker 2: think that's the you know, it's the new idea for
18:54
Speaker 2: the way these things form, very very different from the
18:57
Speaker 2: way features on our own planet form.
19:00
Speaker 1: Well, and almost like you know, I'm sorry, I'm beating
19:04
Speaker 1: the dead horse. But if this was dough, we see
19:09
Speaker 1: how if the dough had risen and it was almost
19:14
Speaker 1: liquidity in that bubble kind of popped and then it
19:17
Speaker 1: softened back down, you see the same kind of lines
19:20
Speaker 1: and dimples that you would see on a cupcake that
19:23
Speaker 1: went flat or something like that. So it really, I mean,
19:28
Speaker 1: their line of logic makes perfect sense for even me
19:30
Speaker 1: who has no geological background. So that's really quite interesting.
19:36
Speaker 2: Yes, I agree, and you know, I think what you've
19:41
Speaker 2: described actually is probably a good model for the way
19:45
Speaker 2: these things formed. I suspect that what we're seeing as
19:49
Speaker 2: the surface of these things is actually the crust of venus,
19:51
Speaker 2: which has been deformed into this shape by the pressure
19:54
Speaker 2: underneath of this very very slow flowing magma. So if
19:58
Speaker 2: you do take the analog of the cookery, something has
20:02
Speaker 2: gone really terribly wrong with your cupcakes.
20:06
Speaker 1: And that's just the recipe for a perfect planet. You
20:11
Speaker 1: can't leave it in the oven too long. You can't
20:13
Speaker 1: let it cool too much. If it's too high, it'll
20:16
Speaker 1: be Venus. If it's too cold, it'll be Mars. Our
20:19
Speaker 1: planet is cooked to perfection. Our planet is the Soufle
20:24
Speaker 1: of planets.
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Speaker 3: all that information in the show notes. Now back to
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Speaker 3: the show.
23:52
Speaker 1: Murder Space Nuts. Well, pivoting away from food references. Now
23:58
Speaker 1: that everyone is hungry. I am so sorry, but we
24:02
Speaker 1: are going to talk about the European Space Agencies fifty
24:06
Speaker 1: year anniversary special coins and if any of you have
24:10
Speaker 1: ever been around coin collectors, military, people who have worked
24:16
Speaker 1: in government type roles, coin collecting can be quite the
24:23
Speaker 1: hobby that people get really really into, and going to
24:27
Speaker 1: different places, different organizations collecting these rare coins is something
24:32
Speaker 1: that I think for some it becomes quite an obsession.
24:34
Speaker 1: So this is actually a pretty exciting story, Fred, and
24:38
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we're talking about it because it's not
24:42
Speaker 1: what's going on in space, but it's how we humans
24:45
Speaker 1: are relating to space.
24:47
Speaker 2: You sound almost as though you're speaking from personal experience there,
24:50
Speaker 2: Heidi about obsessive coin collectors.
24:54
Speaker 1: I'm not the obsessed with coin collector, but I might
24:57
Speaker 1: know a few.
24:58
Speaker 2: Yes, that's so I was wondering. It's true. It's actually
25:03
Speaker 2: I think it's a pretty good hobby as well. If
25:05
Speaker 2: you're you know, it's some very nice things to display,
25:09
Speaker 2: and people do indeed take it very seriously. Indeed, so
25:12
Speaker 2: what this story is about is well more circles, not
25:16
Speaker 2: so much the coins, although they are spectacularly beautiful and
25:22
Speaker 2: it's not too hard to find online what these coins
25:25
Speaker 2: look like. But the anniversary that they're celebrating, so let's
25:29
Speaker 2: cut to the chase. It's the Royal Mint of Belgium
25:31
Speaker 2: and the Royal Dutch Mint that have struck these new coins.
25:36
Speaker 2: They're in euros, of course, the currency of Europe. One
25:40
Speaker 2: is a two and a half two euros fifty coin
25:45
Speaker 2: and the other one is a fifty eurocent coin, and
25:49
Speaker 2: they are both blazoned with the logo of ISA, the
25:54
Speaker 2: European Space Agency, which is celebrating this year fifty years
26:00
Speaker 2: since its inauguration on May the thirtieth, nineteen seventy five.
26:05
Speaker 2: I remember it well, actually, Heidi, because there were two
26:11
Speaker 2: precursor organizations which we used to hear a lot about
26:14
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties and seventies. Of course, the headline
26:19
Speaker 2: headlines were always being made by NASA with the Apollo
26:22
Speaker 2: program and its predecessors, Mercury and Geminy. Those programs were
26:29
Speaker 2: what we lived and breathed actually at the time, those
26:32
Speaker 2: of us who were space fanatics. But the Europeans had
26:36
Speaker 2: two organizations which were called ELDO and EZRO. ELDO was
26:40
Speaker 2: the European Launcher Development Organization and EZRO was the European
26:45
Speaker 2: Space Research Organization, and if I remember rightly, the United
26:49
Speaker 2: Kingdom where I grew up was in one of them,
26:52
Speaker 2: and I can't remember which one it was, and I
26:54
Speaker 2: don't think it was in the other. I think it
26:55
Speaker 2: might have been Ezro. I was at not very long ago.
27:01
Speaker 2: Last year. I was a place called Woomera in South Australia,
27:05
Speaker 2: which was another name that was very familiar to all
27:08
Speaker 2: of space geeks in the fifties, sixties and seventies because
27:12
Speaker 2: that was where British rocket experiments took place. It's a
27:16
Speaker 2: very barren part of Australia, although there are traditional owners
27:20
Speaker 2: who lived there and many rockets tests were carried out there.
27:26
Speaker 2: Most of them ceased in the in the nineteen nineties,
27:31
Speaker 2: early two thousands. All of there's now new work going on.
27:34
Speaker 2: But I had a chance to visit it last year
27:39
Speaker 2: and there's a fabulous museum there with all these nineteen
27:43
Speaker 2: all these twentieth century rocket examples. But there is an
27:47
Speaker 2: ELDO hotel. It's called the Eldo Hotel and it comes
27:50
Speaker 2: from the European Launcher Development Organization, so that was it's
27:55
Speaker 2: a name that probably most people these days wouldn't recognize,
27:58
Speaker 2: but ELDO, that very important organization which eventually melded with
28:05
Speaker 2: the European Space Research Organization to become ISO. A big
28:08
Speaker 2: part it became ESO is the European Southern Observatory. ESO
28:12
Speaker 2: is the European Space Agency, which is what these two
28:15
Speaker 2: organizations turned into. Fiftieth anniversary. ISA has done an extraordinary
28:19
Speaker 2: job over the past fifty years, working a lot with
28:22
Speaker 2: other agencies, most especially with NASA. Of course, ISA is
28:26
Speaker 2: a partner in the International Space Station and it's very
28:33
Speaker 2: very capable, indeed in terms of the not just the
28:37
Speaker 2: human space flight missions that it has been involved with,
28:39
Speaker 2: but also the robotic missions. DAYA just to bring one
28:44
Speaker 2: to mind, which is a very important astronotary satellite to
28:48
Speaker 2: satellite measuring the positions of stars very accurately. That was
28:52
Speaker 2: an ISSA project. In fact, there was an ISSA lander
28:56
Speaker 2: that went to Titan with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and that lander,
29:03
Speaker 2: which was called Huygens, that landed on the surface of Titan.
29:06
Speaker 2: That was an ISA spacecraft, and many many more. I
29:11
Speaker 2: could go on, but I won't because the bottom line
29:14
Speaker 2: is that ISSA is a very productive organization and we're
29:17
Speaker 2: now celebrating with these two lovely.
29:18
Speaker 1: Coins, So fred I wanted to ask you if you knew.
29:24
Speaker 1: I have the coins pulled up on a big screen
29:27
Speaker 1: right now, and I'm looking at the design, and the
29:29
Speaker 1: design looks significant. I don't know if you can see it,
29:33
Speaker 1: but there's the side where it has the fifty year
29:36
Speaker 1: anniversary and then it looks like a star spinning around
29:41
Speaker 1: on some kind of an orbit, and then the other
29:44
Speaker 1: the other side of the coin, the whereas the two
29:47
Speaker 1: and a half euro obviously Europe. I recognize that. But
29:50
Speaker 1: the lines on the left correct me if I'm wrong.
29:54
Speaker 1: Was that from Voyager? Are you seeing what I'm seeing?
29:58
Speaker 2: Yes, I am seeing it. I can see what you mean.
30:01
Speaker 2: They may be it may be they look like the
30:09
Speaker 2: ones that I'm thinking of on the Pioneer spacecraft where
30:12
Speaker 2: they drew lines on it to show where it had
30:15
Speaker 2: come from in relation to quasons in the sky, And
30:18
Speaker 2: it may be something like that. I can't quite make
30:22
Speaker 2: out enough detail just to know what they're depicting there,
30:25
Speaker 2: but it does look something like it, doesn't It very
30:30
Speaker 2: like the Pioneer plague very much.
30:32
Speaker 1: So yeah, well, here's here as a scavenger hunt then
30:36
Speaker 1: for our listeners, you guys can see if you can
30:39
Speaker 1: figure out what the puzzle is on these coins and
30:43
Speaker 1: then right back to us or comment on our social
30:47
Speaker 1: media and let us know what you think the lines mean.
30:52
Speaker 1: I'm going with Voyager, Okay, go for it.
30:57
Speaker 2: There's a symbol there as well, which is underneath the day,
31:01
Speaker 2: so I don't know what we're seeing there. It almost
31:03
Speaker 2: looks like spacecraft.
31:04
Speaker 1: It looks like I don't know, I'm trying to figure
31:06
Speaker 1: that out too. It looks like a seashell on the left,
31:09
Speaker 1: and then like the medical medical symbol on the right.
31:13
Speaker 2: Yeah maybe maybe, Well there must be ann answers to that,
31:16
Speaker 2: which hopefully we'll discover on a later edition of space Notes.
31:21
Speaker 1: Absolutely well, thank you. What a cliffhanger to leave this
31:25
Speaker 1: episode off on. You guys have to go put on
31:28
Speaker 1: your detective hats and while Fred is exploring the mysteries
31:31
Speaker 1: of the universe, we can all be exploring the mysteries
31:34
Speaker 1: on this coin. But thank you so much for everybody
31:38
Speaker 1: who has joined us for another episode of Space Nuts,
31:41
Speaker 1: and we will be seeing you guys next week. See
31:45
Speaker 1: you later, Fred.
31:46
Speaker 2: Thanks again, Heidi. Take care.
31:49
Speaker 1: Facenuts The Space Nuts Podcast.
31:54
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31:59
Speaker 3: favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at
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32:06
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