Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Space Station Smells, Sombrero Galaxy & Dark Energy Dilemmas: #479

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Space Station Smells, Sombrero Galaxy & Dark Energy Dilemmas: #479 · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, Thanks for joining us on Space Nuts, where
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: we talk astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: Coming up on this episode. It is a real stinker,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: and we'll tell you why. Also some also some you're
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: not supposed to make any noise yet, Fred.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: And also it's the end of the year, so we'll
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: do whatever we like.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: The Sombrero Galaxy a new image or two, and it
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: is stunning, to say the least, and possible new data
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: about dark energy that might just tip everything upside down.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: We'll talk about all of that on this episode of Space.
• 0:39
  Speaker 3: Nut fifteen in Channel ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: three two one Space Notes.
• 0:54
  Speaker 4: I bought it, Neils good.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: It's very hard to keep Fred quiet when he's excited.
• 0:59
  Speaker 4: Hello, Fred, I do apologize for speaking out of sherp.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: I keep forgetting you know.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: I'm not here yet, not here until I introduce you
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred Watts, an astronomer at large.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:12
  Speaker 4: That'll be that'll do yet.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Nice Nice to see you, Nice to see you. It's
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: our second to last episode of the year.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Officially, we will be.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Doing some archival episodes over the Christmas New Year period,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: probably some that people haven't heard in a very long time.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: It's it's I don't know whether it's a good or
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: a bad thing that we've been going long enough to
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: have archives.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: That's the past, that's the bart that stun speeding. It's
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: fair enough.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So yeah, but they're really good episodes. And what we're
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: going to do just to keep them a bit fresher
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: is tag them with a little bit of astronomical news
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: as it happens over the Christmas New Year period. I'm
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: leaving that up to Hugh in the studio. We finally
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: found him a job.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: But yes, that's that's well.
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: You see, there is a job there because if you've
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: got if you've got an archive, you've got to have
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: an archivist, Yes, somebody who you know, who looks after
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: the archive. And I'm not going to give anything away
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: here but money. And I have a really good friend
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: who is the archivist to a former prime minister and
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: she is still very very busy with things that concerned
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: you know, his prime ministership and ongoing stuff.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It's really about that.
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, gosh, over my forty years in radio, I got
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: to meet a lot of people with really fascinating jobs.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: I remember doing an interview with a fellow from Dubbo
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: who was a tennis coach and he was a point
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: he was appointed. You don't think about this thing, this
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: sort of thing happening in Dubbo, but he was appointed
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to be the Davis Cup coach for India. Well, it
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: was really fascinating. Yeah, you just never know what's going
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: to pop up, never know it's correct.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Now, we have.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Some stories to tell in this second last episode of
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the year, and the first one's a real stinker involving
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the International Space Station, or at least a transport spacecraft
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: that's arrived there. Recently, we talked about that weird sound
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: coming from the Boeing star Liner, which ended up meaning
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: it was they thought it was feedback, but there's been
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: a few other theories. Now it's a rather stinky situation,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: quite literally for it.
• 3:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, it is.
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: So.
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: This is a supply ship, a Russian supply ship. It's
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: a Progress ninety spacecraft which docked with the International Space
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: Station on the twenty third of November, just a few
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: days ago as we're speaking now. And they it's a routine,
• 3:56
  Speaker 4: completely routine process. You know, the supply ship arrives, you
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: the hatches do the airlocks stuff, and.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: You take all thet all the peckets of M and
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: m's and get on with everything.
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right, and all the you know, the coffee
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: supplies and all the rest of it. Probably, yes, that's right. Anyway,
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: notwithstanding all that, they opened the door but immediately have
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: to shut it again because there's such a bad smell
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  Speaker 4: coming from it.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, and uh.
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: It's it's actually we might be we might be jumping
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: to conclusions here. It's been described as an unexpected odor.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: And in fact, somebody, I think one of the comments
• 4:40
  Speaker 4: was it smells a bit like a spray. And I
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: assume by that I mean, you know, like an air
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: freshener or something like that.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: So it might not be a bad smell, right, we're
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: just assuming that because.
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's why they don't only have baked beans
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: on the Internet space track.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Sure, that's right.
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: The truth about being right, what was that blazing saddles
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: the Yeah, so they shut the door straight away. And
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: I should explain that the spacecraft, the the International Space
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: Station is divided into sector excuse me, sectors. You know,
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: it was made by joining together lots of modules, some
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: of which were Russian, some of which were NASA and
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: the Russian spacecraft dock with the Russian side of the
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: of the International Space Station. So they the cosmonauts, Ross
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: Cosmos scientists and well the cosmonauts, they're all flying. They
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: they shut the shut the door immediately. Apparently they also
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: saw what are described as small droplets, but I don't
• 5:52
  Speaker 4: know whether they were droplets in the air or droplets
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: in you know, the surfaces. But anyway, at the moment
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: as we speak this, the door is shut and they
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: are apparently and I'm quotingspace dot com here, the crew
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: is not in danger and efforts to open the spacecraft
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: are ongoing. That NASA stressed, but.
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: There is.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: There is, you know, it's it's not when you've got
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: an environment like that. All the air that these people
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: are breathing is contained in the space station. It's not
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: a question of opening the windows to let.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: I was about to say, they just should have just
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: opened a window, open a window fresh and get some
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: fresh nothing in there.
• 6:40
  Speaker 4: Well, yes, so, but so what you have to do
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: is something a little bit more serious. And again quoting
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: from space dot com, very nice article on this. After
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: Russian cosmonauts closed the hatch, air scrubbers and contaminant sensors
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: on the International Space Station monitored the station's atmosphere and
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: flight to Control has said their air quality was at
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: normal level, so it hasn't sort the spread a bad
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: smell throughout the whole of the of the spacecraft. Yeah, yes,
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: that's right, Yeah, it is. It is a bit complex
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: because there's there's doors and valves everywhere, and something I
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: didn't know. Apparently the hatch that separates the Russian side
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: from the U. S side is quite often closed at
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: the moment, and that's people.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was going to say, people will automatically, automatically
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: assume that's got something to do with the war in Ukraine.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: But it's not nothing to do with that at all.
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Nothing at all. It's because the Russian side's leaking. There's
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: an air leak. Again, everybody's stressing it's not a danger
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: to anybody on board, but there is disagreement between NASA
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: and Ross Cosmos as to what this leak is caused
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  Speaker 4: by and how you fix it and whether there is
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: a longer term risk. You know, if if you've got
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: a leak, you kind of worry that some something's fractured
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: or something like that, and that it might catastrophically give
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: way and suddenly you've got a big hole in the spacecraft.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently that leak's been going for.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: Like five years. That five years, I know, Oh goodness, Yeah,
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: that was surprised at that too. Clearly, the the International
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: Space Station is an aging piece of recruitment, and obviously
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: you know it's it's the shining example of modern technology.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: But I'm always reminded of what was it that the
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: I forgot what the name of the construction fleet was
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, theog Voggs.
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: That's right, it is the Vogon Constructive Fleet. And when
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: they when the heroes got inside one of the spacecraft,
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: it was just full of old mattresses, l dingy, and
• 8:56
  Speaker 4: so that it makes you think of that sort of thing.
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: Was Arthur Arthur Dent, wasn't it then?
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: After d Yes, that's right, and forward prefect.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, Oh gosh, I remember some trash.
• 9:09
  Speaker 4: Oh no, that's that's worth remembering that it is.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And and my favorite slaty bad Fast.
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah slightly bart fast. Yeah, what a name. Only Douglas
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: Adams could think of the name.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: He was avazing, wasn't he amazing, we're off the track.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: We're talking about the old mattresses on the ISS.
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: Well, I mean we were talking not very long ago
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: Andrew about people just parking things on places where there's
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: a bit of velcrow that they can do something on,
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: and you know, stuff that you wouldn't expect because uh,
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: there was that study of done of the archaeology of
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: the International Space Station and people photographing bits of the
• 9:53
  Speaker 4: space station just to provide a record of how what
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: life is like on the International Space.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: And they put all these still porage systems up for
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: certain uses and found that people were using them for
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: completely different reasons.
• 10:07
  Speaker 4: For other things.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, it's quite interesting. So they don't know
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: what the stink is. They don't know. What I understand
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: about this supply chip is that they take all the
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: goods out and then they fill a thing with rubbish
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: and then they burn it up on re entry.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: I'll get rid of the rubbish.
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: So that's you know, if you yeah, if you can't
• 10:26
  Speaker 4: get into it without a space tom, Yeah, it's not
• 10:30
  Speaker 4: very nice. Yeah, we'll worry. Look forward to hearing what
• 10:35
  Speaker 4: the cause was if they have a work it out,
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: and if we can we'll bring it to spacelu's listeners.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, not something you really need going into Christmas. Yeah,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: could could be anything, could could be anything. Hopefully it's
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: not a bad smell. We haven't determined, you know, what
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: the caliber of the odor is, but yeah, hopefully nothing
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: nasty or noxious.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Or any like that.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: You can read that story at space dot com. This
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Let's take a break from the show to tell you
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• 13:08
  Speaker 1: slash space nuts. Now back to the show Space Nuts Now, Fred,
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: we head out a little way from our own galaxy
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to a wonderful place called the Sombrero galaxy M one
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: O four to be official, and James Webb has just
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: taken a marvelous mid infrared image of it that has
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: got a lot of people very excited.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: It does, yeah, and it's you know, this is the
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: thing about the web telescope. It just blows you away
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: with everything new that comes from it, because we're seeing
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: familiar objects in the completely new lights in for red
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: lights to be exact. So just to paint the picture,
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: you said, m one O four and is Messier of
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: French astronomer of the eighteenth i think late eighteenth century
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: who was interested in comets and he could see all
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: these other fuzzy patches in the sky, so he just
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: numbered them and we and these are mostly galaxies. He
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: didn't know that's what they were, but that's what we find.
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: So M one O four normally known as the Sombrero
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: galaxy because that's what it looks like. It's got a
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: prominent dusty ring around it and a very bright and
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: very extended core so that the central region, you know,
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: looks like the top of a hat, and the and
• 14:35
  Speaker 4: the outer ring looks like the rim of the hat,
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: but with the MIRI view, and MIRI is the midim
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: for red instrument on the James West Telescope. The core
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: which is made of stars, that extended core the sort
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: of bowl of the hat, if I can put it
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: that way, it vanishes completely and we see the ring
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: itself in glorious detail. This is I think they're actually
• 15:00
  Speaker 4: two rings, because there's a ring very near the center
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: of the galaxy also, but this outer ring which is
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: very very dusty, and that's why it shows up so
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: well in mid in forread remember mid in for read light,
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: the dusties opaque, and you can actually see the dust
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: directly near In forred, the light penetrates the dust. So
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: what is excited people is detail in this ring that
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: has never been seen before. And it's the scientists, and
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: some of them are a number among my friends who
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: look at this kind of thing, dusty regions in galaxies.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: They are excited to see that it's very clumpy on
• 15:47
  Speaker 4: a scale of detail that, as I said, hasn't been
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: seen before. And when you look at the image, you
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: can see that this ring is made up of myriads
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: of tiny clumps of dust. Now, the spectroscopy instrument or
• 16:01
  Speaker 4: part of Mary. The infrared detector has provided evidence of
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's that's a coincidence, because I believe that's what
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: they're smelling on it extra space.
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: It might be, Yeah, it might be. It depends how
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: aromatic they are. They might be a bit un aromatic.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: The might it is.
• 16:25
  Speaker 4: But polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons a class of organic molecules carbon containing,
• 16:32
  Speaker 4: and you know the sort of thing that we think
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: of as as going into young solar systems that they
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: demonstrate that there's probably star forming regions embedded in the
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: disc of the of the galaxy Sombrero is it's a
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: it's not a you know, one of these galaxies that's
• 16:52
  Speaker 4: rapidly forming forming stars. It's it's what you might call
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: a quiescent galaxy. It is forming stars, but it's at
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: a slow rate. It's about half the rate that our
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: own galaxy is forming stars, which is roughly two stars
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: per year.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: Roughly. I think, I think I know why.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I think I know why the sombrero is slightly dipped.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So I think this galaxy is having a siesta.
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: There you go.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: That would be the official scientific reason.
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: That probably would be look.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: I like that terminology. The siesta time of the Sombrero galaxy.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: Lovely good bit.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: And indeed it is slightly dipped in the sky, so
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: it does have a black hole, supermassive black hole something
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: like nine billion solar masses, much much bigger than the
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: black hole at the center of our own galaxy. And
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: it is active. So it's what we call an agn
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: an active galactic nucleus, which is something that is you know,
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: it's having a polite and well behaved meal of material
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: that's falling into it from its surroundings, rather than a
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: quasar which is absolutely gobbling everything up and radiating energy
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: at a great rate because of that.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: So, yes, I think they described this one as docile,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: if that.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: Can be a yeah, I think that's probably the word
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: I was looking for. Andrew, Yeah, Doso, Yes, it's low
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: luminosity active galactic nucleus. Sombrero has always been interesting though,
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: and this goes back to beautiful images of the Sombrero
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: that were made by my colleague David Maelin back in
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: the nineteen eighties, the first time we saw these galaxies
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: in color, along with many other nebulae. He was the
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: person who put true color into astronomical imaging by using
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: a three color photographic technique. His image of the Sombrero
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: is perhaps one of the iconic images of the galaxy.
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: But what it did show was that the Sombrero is
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: very rich in globular clusters, these sort of more or
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: less spherical clusters of hundreds of thousands of stars. There
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: are about two thousand of them surrounding the Sombrero galaxy.
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: We have less than two hundred. I think this about
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: one hundred and sixty if I remember rightly, globular clusters
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: in the outskirts of our own galaxy. But the Sombrero
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: is much much richard. And of course it's near enough.
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: It's thirty million light years away. That's pretty well on
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: our doorstep, which is where gets such good images of it.
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: It's near enough that we can study those globular clusters
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: in detail. And globular clusters are one of the they're
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: one of the puzzling things in our understanding of the universe.
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: Are they the nuclei of galaxies that have been stripped
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: of their outer stars by interactions with other galaxies, or
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: where they formed like that as globular clusters in the
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: earliest history of the universe. There was quite a under
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: discussion on that topic.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Actually our.
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: Fiftieth anniversary symposium for the End of Australian Telescope, it
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: was an interesting session on globular clusters what we can
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: learn from them.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Judy and I've got a lot of experience with globular clusters.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: Every Tuesday we baby sit the grandchildren.
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: A lot of globby for clusters.
• 20:31
  Speaker 4: I bet there are. Yeah, you've got two thousands of
• 20:34
  Speaker 4: them though, then you're in real trouble.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Oh I think they managed that.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So look, there's just more to come. It's
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: a reminder of how prolific the James Web Telescope is.
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: Its fourth year of science. Operations will start in the
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: middle of next year, next July.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: They've already had a record breaking number of proposals for
• 21:00
  Speaker 4: time on that during that fourth period. The deadline for
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: submissions for observations was fifteenth of October. And you know
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: it's an over subscribed instrument. The request I love this
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: request for seventy eight thousand hours of observing time, which
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: is nine times more than there is available. That's what
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: we call an over subscription rate. We used to get
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: over subscription rates of two or three and sometimes four
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: on the Anglo Australian Telescope. People want, you know, for
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: every one night on it, the four people wanted to
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: use it. But nine to one is quite extraordinary, and
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: it speaks of just the excellence of the data that
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: are coming from the Jamesweg Telescope.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: I suppose that means fre it.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: If they've got a record number of proposals put to
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: them for time on the James web Space telescope, they're
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: going to have to sit down and pick hand pick
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: who gets to use it and who gets to miss out.
• 22:02
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's the job of time allocation committees.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what they do.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: And I think every telescope in the world has got
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: committees like that that go through them, and they're usually
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: extremely ethical. They give time based only on scientific excellence.
• 22:21
  Speaker 4: So the applications throughout the world again I would think
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: this is true. They're anonymized, so you don't know who
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: they've come from. They're sort of gender free, so you
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: don't know you know what the gender of the applicant is.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: It's to avoid any kind of bias of any sort,
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: and it's a fairly stringent proge process. I do remember
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: talking to one of my colleagues who was sat on
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: one of these time allocation committees actually for the Angle
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: of Australian Telescope over quite a long period, and he
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: mentioned the occasional death threats that he got from you know,
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: who hadn't been given their time. Yeah. Yeah, people life
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: and soul into it. There weren't death threats, So it's
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: just you know, uh, fairly fairly. How can I put
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: its robust criticism?
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: That's sort of yeah, well that's a nice win putting
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: it robust.
• 23:14
  Speaker 4: He interpreted them as death threats.
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's extraordinary.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, I wouldn't have thought that of the of the
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: astronomical community for it.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: You wouldn't.
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: But if you've you know, if you've submitted the same
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: application maybe three years in a row, and you've put
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: your life and soul into it, and you've got students
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: who's whose future depends on getting the observing time and
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: you don't get it, you would feel naturally very frustrated.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that makes that makes perfect sense. But I
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: think when we were first talking about James Web we
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: did talk about how that process worked and how how
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: they were going to do it to make sure that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: it was all, you know, above board, level playing field,
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: no bias, and yeah, but if you want look at
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the pictures of the Sombrero Galaxy as taken by the
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: James web Space telescope.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: Not surprisingly, it's at fizz dot org.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I'm starting to feel sorry for Hubble because.
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Whenever there's a new James Webb image, they go and
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: this is what Hubble took. I just don't think that's fair.
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: No, but it's you know, and of course the Hubbles
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: are two point three meters telescope. James Webb is a
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: six point five meter telescope. He astronomy sizes everything.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, very true. But Hubble's still doing a great job.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: But feel sorry for Hubbling, you know it is.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: It's doing doing a fine job and still producing good science.
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: I'm sorry I was slightly distracted there. I'm trying to
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: pick the key to the James Webb telescope which has
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: fallen on the floor and I can't actually pick.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: It up.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: Fair enough fizz dot org.
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: If you want to check out that story about the
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: Sombrero Galaxy and what we're learning about it.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: Okay, we've taken all.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Space nuts. Finally, Fred a story that has been published
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: only in the last few days our time, but this
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: one will be talked about for a long time because
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: again they're suggesting that this one could rewrite what we
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: know about the cosmos. This all centers around dark energy
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: and we might have to explain what that is again
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: because it's so poorly named. But now they're starting to
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: think that dark energy might be a finite thing based
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: on this new data.
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's a very difficult thing to measure. Is the
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: accelerated expansion of the universe, which is why we didn't
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: know about it until nineteen ninety eight. Two groups of scientists,
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: one in the USA and one in Australia actually worked
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: out that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. So
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: a lot of thoughts has gone into it since then.
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: That's twenty six years ago. And the simplest interpretation is
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: that dark energy is constant. That means that the acceleration
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: of the universe is something that does not change over
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: time except by the fact that a space gets bigger,
• 26:35
  Speaker 4: the energy content of space gets bigger, and so you've
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: got an increased push to accelerate the expansion of the universe.
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: So there's been a fairly consistent view which has apparently
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: been supported by observations that this dark energy is constant. However,
• 27:01
  Speaker 4: some work that's been done on basically a telescope in Arizona.
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: Actually it's the Male telescope, which has a camera on
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: it which has been.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: Used to.
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: Basically study distant galaxies in great detail and look at
• 27:21
  Speaker 4: a huge number of them. It's a very very elegant
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: sort of camera. They are now thinking that the dark
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: energy is not quite constant. And it's basically that issue
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: that is concerning those of us in the astronomy community
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: who are interested in the future of the universe as
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: well as it's past. What it means is so and
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: I should you know, I shouldst mentioned that this involves
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: a very large number of scientists. It's a huge collaboration.
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Some of my colleagues here in Australia, the members of
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: this collaboration. There are ninehundred scientists all over the world
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: studying these data. Now it's a re analysis that we've
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: seen coming out within the last few days. This is
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: why this is in the headlines again. It was the
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: original data were published earlier in the year, but the
• 28:20
  Speaker 4: new analysis has sort of confirmed it that there is
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: something going on that we don't understand that change.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: That's a big change.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: So the way it works, it's an instrument called DESI,
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, which is on the Male Telescope,
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: and that's very similar to the to d F instrument
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: that we have on the d Australian Telescope, which did
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: this sort of thing back in the early two thousands.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: But now the technology has improved to the extent that
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: you can look at many many more objects simultaneously. To
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: DF looked at at four hundred and now you've got
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: many many more than that and seeing them in more
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: detail spectroscopically and with sensitive detectors that you let you
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: look back in time up to about eleven billion years
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: before the present time. So what you're doing there is
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: you are basically you're mapping the universe. This is where
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: it gets a little bit counterintuitive the way you detect
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: dark energies to map the universe, to map where galaxies lie,
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: because it's all about the way galaxies cluster. That gives
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: you the geometry of the universe, and that then gives
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: you what its expansion rate is doing. So they've looked
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: at these galaxies over eleven billion years and basically it
• 29:51
  Speaker 4: reveals that, yes, if dark energy was a constant force,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: and Jordie's getting excited because somebody's about to come home.
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: If dark energy was a constant force, that map would
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: would not make sense. And what they are interpreting this
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: mapping as telling us that the energy is weakening and
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: that it's you've got an acceleration that is itself slowing down,
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: even though the expansion of the universe is still accelerating,
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: but the acceleration is slowing down because dark energy is
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: reducing and that means it's quite different from what we
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: thought it was, or that we're barking up the wrong
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: tree completely, that it's not an energy of space, that
• 30:44
  Speaker 4: there is something totally different going on.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: This could turn a whole understanding of the cosmological model
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: upside down. They're basically, oh, Jeordie's upset by that.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: No, you've hit the nail on the head there. I
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: think the joy I think that's that's agreed, that's agreement.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: Is that Jodey if O, my goodness, say, I'm really sorry.
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: This is what he does is he gets very enthusiastic
• 31:13
  Speaker 4: hang hagos ad.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: Oh gosh, that is so funny. Do you reckon.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: It?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: Can't even find him.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Oh boy, we've just got to the key, the key
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: moment of the story. Yeah, oh gosh, I'm going to
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: put an asterisk on that so that I can find
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: it later. I hope you're listening here. That's that's worth
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: bottling that one. They can't hear me because Fred used
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: his Headphanes, I keep telling you this part of the
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: story without him, But honestly, it's it's it's mind blowing.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: It's mind blowing. Needs an expert touch, which I can't
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: give you. Here he cams with here gams.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: Sorry about that, so we might have got that bit
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: able to do apologize.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: Oh no, that's all right. He'll probably lave it in.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: It just goes mad. Apparently there's another dog around.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: Which, oh, well, that'll do it. That'll do it.
• 32:23
  Speaker 3: Do it.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: So we were talking about what this means for our
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: understanding of the standing cosmological model.
• 32:32
  Speaker 4: We were and it obviously means that dogs are going
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: to bark louder and longer than they ever have done
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: before because it's such an astonishing result. Yeah, So what
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: it means is it's it's going to be an ongoing story.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: We will hear more about.
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: This over the next few months probably, and hopefully we
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: will have some sort of what you might call a
• 32:57
  Speaker 4: consensus coming up something that that that will you know,
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: allow the theory theoretical astronomers who build models of all
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: this stuff to try and get their heads around what
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: might be happening with this current reduction of the acceleration
• 33:16
  Speaker 4: rate of a time.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's it's one of the big mysteries, and
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: it's something that we get asked about quite often for
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: Q and A episodes, and it's something that keeps coming up,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and they keep testing Einstein's theory of general relativity to
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: see if they can break it. You know, there is
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: so much at stake in terms of this kind of
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: data and studying dark energy and you know, finding out
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: what it is and what it's doing and why it's
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: there and how it works, all of which we don't
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: really understand.
• 33:53
  Speaker 4: No, I mean, you've hit the nail on the head
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: and drew in the sense that this could be an
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: indicat of new physics that we don't understand. Going on
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: in the universe, and that's where things get really exciting,
• 34:06
  Speaker 4: because we rewrite the textbooks on levels of that sort
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: of thing.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, and that leads to dogs and cats living together
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and all sorts of terrible things. Maybe not, but yeah.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah indeed, but yeah.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: It's a fascinating story, very much worth reading, and I'm
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: sure it will spawn multiple questions for us to deal
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: with in the next a series of episodes in twenty
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: twenty five. You can read that story in fizz dot org.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: The dark energy pushing a universe apart may not be
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: what it seems scientists say. That's the title of the piece.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: We are just about done, Fred, thank you so much.
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: Ah, pleasure as always, and we'll speak again soon, I hope.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, very soon, probably for our finalpisode of the year.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks Fred, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large, and thanks
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: to Hugh in the studio who couldn't be with us
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: because he was dealing with a dark matter bomb bomb.
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: And from me from me Andrew Dunkley.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: By the way, don't forget to visit our website and
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: our social media platforms and leave reviews on your podcasting
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: platforms if you If you do don't mind. Reviews are
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: always very helpful to spread the word. But for now,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: thank you and we'll see you again on the next
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: episode of Space Nuts.
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: Bye bye Nuts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.