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Ryugu Revelations, Martian Moon Theories & Galactic Shockwaves: #477 · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, Andrew Dunkley here. Thanks for joining us on
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: another edition of Space Nuts.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: Coming up.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: This time, we are going to once again talk about
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: the Riugu asteroid. We've had a couple of discussions about
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: it recently, but the news this time is not so
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: positive and it involves some kind of contamination that seems
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to have happened despite everyone's best efforts to avoid it.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: There's also a new theory that's been put forward thanks
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: to computer modeling, about how the moons of Mars may
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: well have formed. There's a few theories. This is a
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: new one to add to the sphere boom boom, and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the first results from a new instrument on the William
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Herschel Telescope. We'll talk about all of that on this
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three two one spaces
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Can I record it?
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Neil's good and joining me to talk about all of
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: that and much much more is Professor Fred What's an
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: astronomer at last? Tello Fred?
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Hello, Andrew, good to see you.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Good to see you too. Now, before we start, I'm
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: going to put you on the spot because I've been
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: I've been looking at the calendar and working a few
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: things out. This episode will be officially re released on
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: the twelfth of the twelfth, and your birthday is two
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: days later and you're turning eight hundred. Now, hang on,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: it's got an eight in it.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it begins with an E and it's not eleven.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: So that's a clue.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: So I suppose this episode we should start by collectively
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: wishing you a very happy birthday, FREDI thank you, thanks
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: e very much. Should it be two days time? Through
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: relief of this episode, even though we're recording this one
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, so.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Speaking for yourself, I thought it was in nineteen forty seven.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it could have been toned. No, No, we were
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: running a bit early to see out the year. But
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: I hope you have a wonderful birthday, Fred, and now
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you've got many, many more. Yeah, that's the important bear,
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: That is the important bit.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Got to keep this thing that the brain cells ticking over.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: I think that's the secret.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: To long life.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: Just I think space heats of brain whewing space notes.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, absolutely.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Now we have got some fascinating stories today, and we'll
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: start off with Rugu, the asteroid that was visited a
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Japanese mission. I believe that brought back samples and they've
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: been looking at those samples, and now they've looked at
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: them and gone, ha, hang on a minute, what's happened here?
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Somebody spilled some jam on them or something that wasn't that,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: But they do appear to have become questionable in terms
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: of the quality because the effort to keep them clean
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: has failed.
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: That's right, And that's really the lesson of this story,
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: just how hard it is to keep earthly microbes away
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: from anything. And you know, it has implications with our
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: sterilization processes for spacecraft going to other worlds. We've talked
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: before about the Planetary Protection Rules, which mean that if
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: you're sending a spacecraft to somewhere on Mars where liquid
• 3:30
  Speaker 3: water could exist, it's got to have the very highest
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: if I remember, its Category four C sterilization, which means
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: that there are only thirty microbes on board the spacecraft.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: I don't know how they do that, but that's what
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: they do. But what this story is telling us is
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: that that might not be enough. That might just you know,
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: be effectively scratching the surface. And so this is some
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: work that's been done at Imperial College in London, one
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: of the London universities, and a paper that's been published
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: in Meteoritics and Planetary Science, which is called rapid Colonization
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: of a space returned UGU sample by terrestrial microorganisms, And
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: basically it tells you that on the surface of the
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: samples that came back to Earth from this via the
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: Hyabusa two spacecraft from Rugu, they have found microbes, basically,
• 4:26
  Speaker 3: and it's extraordinary that, you know, the the despite everybody's
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: best efforts to keep these free from contaminations, they've got contaminated.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: I might just read a very nice article on fizz
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: dot org which is just It is one of by
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: Justin Jackson, and there's a paragraph here that tells you what,
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: basically what the samples underwent to keep them clean. So
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: that transported to Earth in a hermetically sealed chamber. The
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: sample was opened in nitrogen in a Class ten thousand
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: clean room. I don't know what that means, but it
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: sounds very clean. To prevent contamination, individual particles were picked
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: with sterilized tools and stored under nitrogen in air type
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: containers before analysis. The sample underwent nano X ray computed
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: tomography and was embedded in an epoxy resin block for
• 5:25
  Speaker 3: scanning electro scanning electron microscopy. But this found these what
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: are described as rods and filaments of organic matter and
• 5:36
  Speaker 3: a lovely lovely phrase here interpreted as filamentous microorganisms were
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: observed on the sample surface and yeah, variations in size
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: and morphology or shape of these structures resembled known terrestrial microbes,
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: and observations showed that the abundance of these filaments changed
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: over time, suggesting on growth and decline of a population.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: It's incredible, isn't it That no matter what you do,
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: you can't keep them clean. And so it's it's really
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: a lesson, I think for our future understanding of the
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: exploration of life beyond the Earth. For a start, it
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: means that there's probably microbial contamination now on Mars, on
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: the Moon, it's all over the place.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: If we've created a really significant clean environment for those
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: samples we've brought back, it stands to reason we've sent
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: microbes to other worlds because we probably weren't that thorough
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: in sending those spacecraft, and if the safety situation was
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: so strict on the Ryugu samples and the microbes got through.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: It stands to reason that we have sent micrabs all
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: over the system.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Pretty well.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a bit scary really because if there is
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a world with life and we've sent microbes to them,
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: what could happen? I mean, my logic says to may
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: our microbes wouldn't survive, but they're pretty.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Tough, and more than that, they adapt. There's another lovely
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: paragraph from Justin's Peace on fiz dot org which is
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: basically what we've just been saying. NASA tries to avoid
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: introducing earth microbes to Mars by constructing probes and landers
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: in clean room environments, and has found the task nearly impossible.
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: There have been species of microbes Wait for this, there
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: have been species of microbes discovered in NASA clean rooms
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: that not only evade disinfection methods, but also adapt to
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: using cleaning agents as a food source.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: Yes, I know. That's absolutely blew in my mind when
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: I read that.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: Good grief.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I mean that that is the a glaring
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: example of adaptation to an environment, isn't it. When that's right,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: let's eat the petrol?
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: Yes exactly, Yeah, that's basically do it incredible, that's quite natural.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I know, I know that somebody in our audience, probably
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: more than one person, will say, hang on a minute,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: how do we know that these weren't microbes that already
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: existed on reug And they're pretty they're pretty positive that
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: they aren't. The article says, population statistics indicate that the
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: microorgans microorganisms originated from terrestrial contamination during the sample preparation stage,
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: rather than being indigenous to the asteroid. So yeah, they
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: are very confident and probably disappointed that they are not.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, asteroidal origin.
• 9:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, people do look for signs of perhaps
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: fossilized microbes in meteorites, particularly and you'll remember it's ALH
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: eight four zero zero zero one, I think was the
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: name of it, the Allen Hills meteorites, which in the
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: early nineteen nineties was found to have within its structure
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: these weren't on the surface like these things that have
• 9:42
  Speaker 3: been found in this story, but within its structure it
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: was found to have things that strongly resemble terrestrial microbes,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: only they were about a thousand times smaller. So the
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: court started calling them nanobes because you know, they were
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: on a nanoscale rather than microscope. But it turned out
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: that there are simple chemical reactions that take place in
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: geological formations that can produce these things that look like
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: if that look like living organisms. So the astrobiology community
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: has been pretty strict about what the criteria are for
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: having discovered life in a meteorite. And it's not just
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: that you find something that looks like a microbe. I
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: think there are chemical tests and things of that sort
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: that will be done that would, you know, verify if
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: this was indeed a microbe that had come from Mars.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: But I think, you know, it's still possible we might
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: find something like that. I think there's so much activity
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: in this field Andrew that I think there's a good
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: chance we might one day turn up a Martian microbe.
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: And even more likely that when finally the soil and
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: rock samples from Persevereherance come back to Earth, that we
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: might find something in there that's that will be the
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: that will be the really exciting story when when that's
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: an EASA get their act together. I don't know what
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: the situation is, but I think it's still in abeyance
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: because everything that the planned was going to cost too much.
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: But to bring back these little tubes of Martian soil
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: and rock that have been left by perseverance on the
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: surface of Mars.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. That's so human, isn't it. Let's get some samples. Yeah,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: but what are we going to do about collecting them?
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we'll figure that out. We'll figure it out later. Oh,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: hang on, it's going to cost too much. Oh, we'll
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: figure it out much later.
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: Well that's basically where we are now. Yeah, less that's
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: in there. Give other mens that I'm not aware of. Yes,
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: it's a very human thing. She'll be right.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: But I do agree with you that sometime in they're
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: not too distant future, we will find evidence of past
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: life somewhere in the Solar system. And this is a
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: classic example of how life can grasp even the smallest,
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: almost impossible opportunity. And if that can if that can
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: happen in a room that's designed not to allow it
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: to happen, then it could probably happen anywhere exactly. And
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: you don't even have to add the caveat if the
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: circumstances are right, because the circumstances were not right and
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: it still happened.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's really quite extraordinary.
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, amazing story, And you can read it at fizz
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: dot org. You're listening to Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: and Professor Fred.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Watson Space Nuts. Now this next.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: Story takes us to Mars, and there's a new theory
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: that's been put forward about the origin of the Moon's
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: Phobos and de Moss. There were I think there were
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: two theories that previously existed, and that was that they
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: are both captured asteroids. I think the other theory was
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: that something hit Mars just like fear hit Earth and
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: created the moons as a consequence of that impact. Now
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: they've got another idea, and this one seems to have
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: just as much validity, maybe more.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. In fact, it's the modeling really seems
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: to demonstrate that this is on the right track. It's
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: a study that's been carried out by scientists in the
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: United States as well as well as using some code
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: that Durham University has prepared. That's the University of Durham
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: in the UK. They've got one of the most advanced
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: computing systems in the United Kingdom and they've used it
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: to build models of the universe that are kind of
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: complete in every detail. It's amazing stuff. So that computing
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: facility has been used in this research trying to work
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: out what happened happened to create these two tiny moons
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: of Mars, Phobos, which if I remember rightly, is about
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: twenty three kilometers across, shaped like a potato, and Demos,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: which is quite a bit smaller. I think it's only
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: fifteen or thereabouts kilometers across and shaped a bit like
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: a smaller potato. So you're quite right. Two theories. One
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: is that there were simply asteroids that were captured when
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: they passed close to Mars, and the other one is
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: that perhaps there was a giant impact is exactly as
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: you've said, a little bit like thea impacting the Earth
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: and creating the Moon, an impact on the Martian surface
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: that lifted an enormous amount of material to form a
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: disc of material around Mars, and the moons are basically
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: formed in that disc. And that's probably the more popular theory.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: But uh, and the reason for that is that it
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: really neatly accounts for the orbits of Phobos and Demons.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: That's why people like that because it sort of matches
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: the present day orbits of Phobos and demas. That's what
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: you get if this ejector from an impact had collected
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: in orbit around Mars. But there is a snag, and
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: one is that if that had been the case, if
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: if these worlds are made of material that was ejected
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: from Mars itself, they would have formed closer to Mars
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: than they are. Uh. And the there's a gotcha in
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: particular with Demos. It's the radius of its orbits tells
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: you that it actually had to form that far away
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: from Mars. It couldn't have formed very close to Mars
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: and then migrated outwards. It would have basically just gone
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: back to Mars and crashed again. And so this new material, sorry,
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: this new model suggests that the material from which these
• 16:17
  Speaker 3: two worlds are made, Fobos and Demos, didn't come from Mars.
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: That it came from an asteroid that passed too close
• 16:25
  Speaker 3: to Mars's surface and basically broke up as it bypassed Mars.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: So if you imagine an asteroid heading in Mars's direction,
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: it's not going to impact the planet, but it's going
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: to do a near miss. Now, a near miss means
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: that it's very close to Mars's surface and it feels
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: very strong tidal effect. And what we mean by tidal
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: effect is the difference in the gravitational pull on one
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: side of an object compared with the other. That's what
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: quit creates tides on Earth. The near side of this
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: asteroid hypothetical asteroid would have felt more gravity than the
• 17:06
  Speaker 3: far side, and that creates tension within it, which basically
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: breaks it up. So this thing you cannot withstand the
• 17:13
  Speaker 3: tidal forces. It breaks up into debris and then circulates
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: around Mars, and eventually Phobos and Demos are formed within
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: that ring of material. And in fact, it's very nicely
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: accounts for the differences between Phobos and Demos and the
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: different orbits that they've got.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, so it's not dissimilar to theory too that
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: what they're saying. To expand on what you were saying,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: it's an asteroid that was passing Mars. The gravitational effect
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: caused it to break up. But further too that all
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: those bits and pieces continued to collide and smash up
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and created created a proto planetary disc if you like,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: on on Mars scale, and then that formed into the
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: two moons. Is that what they that's what they're saying.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: That's that's correct. Yes, that's what they're saying. And the
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: model sort of makes predictions about the the orbits of
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: the final orbits of the Moon, which which basically are
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: what we see in reality. So yes, it's it's it's
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: a very nice piece of work, and there is some
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: possibility that we might get some hard and fast results
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: from both Phobos and Demos because there's a JAXA spacecraft
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency called MMX, which is the Martian
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: Moon's Explorer or Martian Moon's Exploration mission, and it's a
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: simple return mission, and the Japanese are very good at
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: sample return. We've just been talking about the fragments of
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: asteroid Ryugu, which is a sample return from an asteroid.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: So this mission will will bring back samples from both
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: Phobos and Demos and give us a lot more close
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: up studies of those two worlds. And so you know,
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: we might find from whatever they bring back that we
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: find the compositions of the Moons actually would match what
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: this scenario suggests, because you'd expect if it was a
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: broken up asteroid, you'd expect the material, the isotopic content
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: of the material of which Phobos and Demos were made
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: would match that of the asteroid rather than Mars itself,
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: which is what you get from a collision. So MMX
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: launch in twenty twenty six and something I hope we'll
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: talk about on the space nuts.
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: Absolutely one question though, if that was the case, and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: you can write off theory one, which was like, you know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Mars just captured two passing asteroids, Theory two and theory
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: three still see ejecta or material being used to form
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: the moons, why wouldn't they be spherical?
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: If that's the case, I'm being answer.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: For the gravity you can create them.
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's correct, that's absolutely it. So that you know,
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: it's like a lot of asteroids are mobbly shaped, they're
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: a bit like some of them are very like spinning tops,
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: they're the rubble piles. Some of them are like potatoes,
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: some are like dumbbells. And that's probably two asteroids that
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: have come together, and you know that originally in orbit
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: around each other and have now become one. So so
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: on a sample return would I think allow a distinction
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: between all of those models, so we might have a
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: very good in much the same way as a sample
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: returns from the moon back in the nineteen sixties and
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: seventies gave us our ideas for how the moon formed.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, you know what we've learned from this from
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: a horticultural perspective thread, If potatoes on Earth grew bigger,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: they ultimately become spherical, that's what we've learned from.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: They would, they absolutely would, Yes, that's fairical potato. But
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: they'd have to be big enough for their own gravity
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: to pull them into auspherical shape while they were in
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: free for so you need to be throwing them up
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: in the air as well as as well as let
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: them grow bigger.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: That would just add to the price.
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, they'd have to get up to in the region
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: of five hundred kilometers in diameter, and most potatoes are not. Actually,
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: you know, you see these prize winning marrows and pump
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: kits and things like that that people need a wheelbarrow
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: to move around for forget it. Very cool potato.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: It's an interesting hobby that and I yeah, and I
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: just don't understand the logic of growing giant fruit that
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: nobody can eat, or giant no vegetables.
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: So you know, you can turn them into motorway crash
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: barriers and things like that. They're quite useful and that
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: we can't but yes you.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: Can, oh, gosh. But yeah, it's a really interesting theory
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: and it probably holds water compared to the other two
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: theory two theory three both the same in result, different
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: different techniques. Yeah, but you can read that story at
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: NASA Spaceflight dot Com. There's a space that it's Andrew
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Dunkley here with professor.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: Fred space MutS our final story.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Fred looks at an instrument. It's not a violin, the
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: cello or a saxophone. It is an instrument connected to
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the William Herschel telescope and it's just come up with
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: some really interesting information about colliding galaxies.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Do tell Yeah, So just about the instrument itself, which
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: is something built by very close colleagues of mine actually
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, and
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: it's a little bit like we have, for think, called
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: two DF on the Angle Australian Telescope. Tow DF stands
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: for the two degree field and it's a device that
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: lets you position optical fibers and in fact, in two
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: DF there are four hundred of them in exact alignment
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: with the images that the telescope delivers, so you can,
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: for example, measure the characteristics of four hundred stars at
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: a time, or four hundred galaxies at a time. And
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: you know, back in the day when I started my career,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: you could only observe the spectra, the rainbow spectra with
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: all its information locked up in it. You can only
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: do that one at a time at least to get
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: the details.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: No, you and I, You and I did it a
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: little TV special about the two DF when it was installbleent. Yeah, yep, yep,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: I remember then.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: That's right. So two DF has been incredibly successful. Now,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: the William Herschel Telescope which was built if I remember rightly,
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: it was commissioned in nineteen eighty seven. It's a telescope
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: of a similar size to our Anglo Australian telescope. It's
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: got a slightly bigger mirror. It's four point two meters
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: it was against three point nine meters. But it was
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: built by the same company, so Howard grub Parsons with
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: whom I started my career, Andrew and so the William
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: Herschel telescope is not in Australia though, like ours is.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: It's on the island of La Palma, which is one
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: of the Canary Islands in off the West coast of
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: Africa and La Palma is basically a giant volcanic cone.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: In fact, it has an active volcano in the south
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: of the island, which has been in the newest within
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: the last couple of years.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: I think Judy and I will be visiting there next year.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: Oh well, I had to check out.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Our itinery, but I've got a fe we do make
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: a stop at the Canary Islands.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, if you There are quite a few Canary islands,
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: but La Palma is certainly the interesting one from from
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: an astronomical point of view, as is Tenerifa, the bigger
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: island not very far away that's got telescope on its
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: On its summit a mountain called Cadi. The mountain on
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: La Palma is a rocket de Delsarchos, which means the
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: rock of the Brothers or the rock of the Friends.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: It's a sort of strange rock formation on top of
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: the mountain, but that's where the telescopes are, including the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: William Herschel telescope, which for a while was the biggest
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: on the island at four point two meters. There's now
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: a ten meter telescope called l what's it the te
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: telescope Grand Yeah, TGC telescope, your Grande Canarias. It's a
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: Spanish telescope with a ten met mirror.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: And you know why they call it.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: That gives you a bird's eye view.
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: Canary I view, of course, that's right. Yeah, you know why?
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: You know why the Canary Islands called the Canary here's
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: a friendly factoid.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know, actually I've never looked it up.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Right, Well, it's not because of canaries. It comes from
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: the Latin word canis for dog, and it's because there
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: were dogs on the island, so it's the dog Island. Basically, Wow,
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: canis major the great dog in these garden. Yeah, the
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: Canary Islands had dogs on them. That's why they got
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: called that by the Romans, I think, which is why
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: it's Latin. Anyway, enough of that, So what's this telescope
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: got that we haven't got. It's now got something called WEAVE,
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: which is the William Herschel Telescope Enhanced Area Velocity Explorer,
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: which is a similar system with a slightly different methodology
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: for positioning optical fibers. And as I said, it's very
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: good friends of mine who've been involved with that, and
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: one of them is actually quoted in the article I
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: was looking at Professor Gavin Gavin Dalton. Actually I might
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: just tell it. I hope you're not listening, Gavin, because
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: I'm going to drop you in with a very well
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: known story. Gavin was one of the commissioning scientists with
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: t d F did a lot of work on the
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: on the artually with the two DF Survey, a lot
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: of work on the telescope, and he it was one
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: of the first among us to have a MacBook, which
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: of course comes with a power supply. One epic night,
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: at the start of the night's work, Gavin put plugged
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: this power supply for his MacBook in one of the
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: wall sockets in the control room of the telescope, and
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: there was a bang, and we lost all power for
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: the night.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know quite what happened with that, but Gavin
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: was very embarrassed about it. I think we eventually got
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: going again. I was there at the time, but it
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: was quite who everything everything just died, including this.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I can understand that we had that happen at
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: a radio station once because a cleaner plugged the vacuum
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: into a ups soccer. Yes, and it just the whole
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: place just went dark because through too much just wow, yeah,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: it killed everything.
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: Well it may have been something like that with that
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: notebook thing. So yeah, a good algoing. It's done, a
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: fantastic job with great scientists working with Ian Lewis, another
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: friend and colleague at Oxford. Ian was actually out for
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: our fiftieth birthday celebration on the Australian Telescope last month. Anyway,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: that's the instrument and all I know about it. What's
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: the story. Well, it's been used in its commissioning mode
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: sort of just you know, finishing it off and making
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: sure a clane works. They have used it to explore
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: some of the galaxies in an air sky beloved to
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: astronomers called Stephan's quintet. When Stephan's quintet is a quintet
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: of galaxies very close together, one of them actually is
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: not part of the group physically because it's about half
• 29:12
  Speaker 3: the distance of the rest. The rest of them are
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: a physical group which are interacting. These are four galaxies
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: very close to each other, which are themselves, you know,
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: pulling each other about because of their gravity. And it
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: turns out that by using the weave instrument to look
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: at the velocities of material that are basically being carried
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: by the shock waves of the collision. They've explored this
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: and are quite amazed by the sorts of speed that
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: are being reached these by these essentially these shock waves
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: of galaxies. So one of the collision speeds is three
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: point two million kilometers per hour, which is quite fast.
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: That's two of the galaxies colliding, and so the shock
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: wave between them, because they've both got gas clouds around them,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: there's a shock wave formed by this collision, and that
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: is basically, you know, causing other things to move around.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: And you can explore that movement by something called the
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: weave large into grill field unit or LIFU, which is
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: a way of putting many many optical fibers on galaxies
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: so that you sample the movement of objects in each galaxy.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: You create what's called spax holes because there's a three
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: dimensional pixel if I can put it that way, and
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: so you've got the lost in one direction and basically
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: the image in the other. So yes, so this works
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: come now from weave. It looks like a very very
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: high impact results and in fact, can quote the director
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on the Parma
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Mark I'm not sure how you pronounce his name, because
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: it's not somebody I know, bal cells or bulcales, both cells,
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: I guess who says. I'm excited to see that the
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: data gathered at the weave first light already provide a
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: high impact result, and I'm sure this is just an
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: early example of the types of discoveries that will be
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: made possible with weave on the William Herschel Telescope in
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: the coming years.
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm great. That's extraordinary.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Does that suggest that similar things could happen with Andromeda
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: in the Milky Way?
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, a lighting, Yeah, it does.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: It's it's let's see, we've got similar collision speeds. It's
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: about two hundred kilometers per second. If I remember rightly
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: that we're approaching Andromeda. What's that multiplied by three thy
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: six hundred. It's a lot, and so about three hundred thousand,
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: isn't it. Yeah, there are six hundred thousand kilometers per hour,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: which is getting on for a million. So the speeds
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: are not quite as big as what we're seeing in
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Stephan's quintect but they are nevertheless big enough to cause
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: shock waves, and that's what will lead to star formation.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: It will cause stars to form rapidly and we might
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: get many super and over explosions, which might be the
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: most obvious consequence of the andro Milky Way collision when
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: we see it in three point two billion years.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: Watch Stuts.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: It's on my calendar.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no worries. Yeah, that's a great story. So you
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: can read all about that. Well, Julie's here, he's excited,
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: very excited. Fiz dot org. Fizz dot org is the website.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: Lots of great stories there. It's a fabulous website. Really
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: love it. And that brings us to the end of
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: the program. Don't forget to visit us online at our website,
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts podcast dot com or space dot io and
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: have a bit of a brows around. If you're looking
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: for Christmas gifts, well we've got a shop. So if
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: you've got someone that you know you just can't think
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: of anything, but you know they like astronomy, the Space
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: Nuts Shop is the place to go, and plenty of
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: other things to see and do while you're there. Fred,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: thank you so much. Great to see you. Thanks for
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: filling us in on all of those great stories today.
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: Sounds good. Thanks Andrew, and we'll talk again soon.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: We will indeed, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large, and
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Hugh in the studio. Well, Hugh couldn't be here today
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: due to a microbial contamination and from me Andrew Dunkley,
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: thanks to your company. We'll catch you on the very
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: next episode of Space Nuts.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Byeauts. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, all your favorite podcast player.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: This has been another quality podcast production from Knights dot com.