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Cosmic Detectives: Solving the Missing Matter Mystery & Exploring Earth's Magnetic Secrets · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another exciting episode of
0:02
Space Nuns. I'm your host for this season,
0:06
Heidi Campo. And joining us is Professor
0:08
Fred. Watch it. Fred Watson,
0:11
astronomer at large.
0:13
Professor Fred Watson: Actually, that's quite a nice, uh. It's quite
0:16
a nice epithet. It should be Fred watching,
0:19
uh, because I watched the universe. Fred
0:21
watching here loud and clear.
0:24
Looking forward to speaking again, Heidi.
0:27
Heidi Campo: We, uh. We, uh. We're off to a great start.
0:30
No, that's. That is fun. We are. We are. We
0:32
are all observers in this universe. And you
0:35
are listening to space nuts.
0:37
Generic: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
0:40
10, 9. Uh, ignition
0:43
sequence.
0:43
Professor Fred Watson: Star space nuts.
0:45
Generic: 5, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4,
0:48
5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Space
0:50
nuts. Astronauts report it feels good.
0:54
Heidi Campo: Um, today we have some very interesting
0:57
articles. Uh, we're. We're kind of kicking
0:59
things off. It's a. It's kind of a mystery
1:01
episode. I feel like this is a very, very
1:03
detective heavy episode. We've
1:06
got mysteries being solved,
1:09
we have mysteries unsolved, and we have clues
1:12
to mysteries. So our first
1:14
article this week is we are talking about a
1:17
mystery that, uh, might be
1:20
solved. So this is, uh. We're looking
1:23
at what this is, is the home address
1:26
for some missing matter.
1:29
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Um, uh, it's a
1:31
story that, um, I find really
1:34
interesting because the
1:37
groundwork for this work was laid down five
1:39
years ago here in Australia,
1:42
um, with, um, work that's
1:45
been carried out on something you and I have
1:47
spoken about before. Briefly.
1:50
Uh. Briefly is the word, because we're
1:52
talking here about fast radio bursts,
1:55
uh, which are things that have only been
1:58
known in the last. It's getting on for 20
2:00
years now since the first observations were
2:02
made. But, uh. But they're still
2:04
relatively new in the
2:07
armory that astronomers can bring to
2:10
bear on the universe. And what they are
2:13
is pretty well what the name says. They're
2:16
bursts of radio radiation. These are detected
2:19
with radio telescopes, not visible light
2:21
telescopes. Uh, and they are.
2:24
Fast, uh, is probably a misnomer. Uh,
2:26
short would be a better word. Uh,
2:29
but they, uh. Because they only last for
2:32
typically a millionth of. Sorry, uh, a
2:34
millisecond, a thousandth of a second,
2:35
thereabouts, roughly. Often they've got
2:38
structure in them as well, which is
2:40
interesting when you look at the profile of
2:42
the intensity of that millisecond
2:44
burst spread out. If you can magnify the,
2:48
uh, sort of time domain, you can see that
2:50
there are features in that, uh, peaks and
2:52
troughs, uh, squashed into that millisecond.
2:55
So very, very fascinating
2:58
objects. Their origin is still not
3:01
certain. Um, I think the best
3:04
guess of my colleagues who work on this kind
3:07
of thing is that they are flares on
3:10
magnetars. And magnetars are
3:12
highly magnetized neutron stars.
3:15
And these things apparently are able
3:18
to have flares on their surface which can be
3:21
very intense. These radio bursts are very,
3:23
very bright in the radio spectrum.
3:27
So that's one thing.
3:29
Heidi Campo: Real quick, Fred. I'm sorry.
3:30
Professor Fred Watson: No worries.
3:31
Heidi Campo: I have noticed, um, based on the questions
3:33
lately, that we are getting a lot of new
3:35
listeners lately. Can you, um, maybe
3:38
specify to some of our newer listeners the
3:40
difference between a neutron star and
3:43
perhaps our star?
3:45
Professor Fred Watson: I can, um. Yeah, sorry. That's a really good
3:48
question and a really good point to make. Um,
3:51
so, um, neutron stars are, uh,
3:54
stars that have reached the end of
3:56
their life, their hydrogen fuel, which
3:59
is what powers stars like our sun that's
4:02
being powered by hydrogen fuel. As we speak.
4:06
That fuel has run out on
4:09
a neutron star. And
4:11
the stars are really interesting because
4:14
there's a constant battle going on between,
4:17
uh, the radiation that is coming from
4:20
these nuclear processes, which is pushing
4:22
outwards, and gravity, which is pulling
4:24
inwards and trying to compress, uh, a star
4:27
like the sun. So it achieves a balance
4:29
between, uh, radiation and gravitation.
4:32
And so you can imagine what would happen if,
4:35
at the end of a star's life, um, the
4:38
radiation stops because the nuclear
4:41
processes have actually changed. They don't
4:43
stop, but they change. What's going to happen
4:45
is gravitation wins and compresses, uh,
4:48
the star down. And that, uh, sometimes
4:50
happens explosively in the case of what we
4:53
call a supernova, an exploding star. And so
4:55
one possible remnant from such
4:58
an event is a neutron star, uh,
5:01
in which, uh, the thing
5:04
has collapsed. And the only thing that's
5:07
stopping that central core of
5:11
the X star, the star that is now
5:14
no longer a star. The only thing,
5:17
um, that stops it collapsing completely to a
5:20
black hole, uh, is the outward
5:22
resistance of the neutrons within it.
5:25
Um, and so those neutrons have an
5:28
outward pressure, and that limits the
5:30
collapse. Uh, so what you have is
5:33
a star that used to be perhaps like our Sun.
5:35
1.3. Probably more actually, in the case of a
5:38
neutron star, because they're bigger than the
5:39
sun anyway. 1.32
5:42
million kilometers across. Suddenly, uh,
5:45
it's collapsed to something, um, 10
5:47
kilometers, 7 miles across,
5:50
uh, but with incredibly high density.
5:54
And all sorts of unusual phenomena take place
5:57
in those stars. They are generally
5:58
magnetized. Um, many of them
6:01
squirt, um, beams of radiation out, um,
6:04
and because they're rotating, those Beams
6:06
have this sort of lighthouse effect that we
6:08
see them flashing. Uh, but we believe
6:11
as well some are so highly magnetized that
6:14
they form a different species, though what
6:16
are called magnetars. And apparently they
6:18
have flares on them. Uh, and these flares are
6:21
what we think gives rise to fast radio
6:23
bursts. So that's
6:26
where the science is. Uh,
6:28
astronomers have been now observing these
6:31
fast radio bursts for
6:34
best part of a decade. Uh,
6:37
and, uh, one or two of them repeat,
6:40
which are a bit mysterious because it
6:42
suggests that something's rotating because
6:44
you get this repeating appearance of the
6:46
burst. Uh, often though, they just come
6:49
out of nowhere. Uh, and there are several
6:51
radio telescopes in the world that are
6:53
actively looking for these objects. One
6:56
of them is down, uh, here in Australia,
7:00
uh, the ascap, the Australian Square
7:01
Kilometer Array Pathfinder. And that actually
7:04
was one of the ones that contributed to the
7:06
work that was carried out that I mentioned a
7:08
minute ago, uh, about five years ago.
7:11
Um, in looking at how
7:14
what these fast radio bursts might tell us
7:17
about not just magnetars, but about
7:20
the space through which the bursts of
7:22
radiation travel. Because we now know
7:25
that most of these radio bursts take place in
7:28
very distant galaxies. They're galaxies that
7:30
are, ah, you know, where distances are
7:32
measured in billions of light years. They're
7:34
a long, long way off. And so the radio
7:37
bursts have traveled through a lot of empty
7:40
space. Apparently empty. Um,
7:43
and so I'm getting near the story here.
7:46
This is the introduction to the story. We're
7:48
nearly there. Um, what we
7:51
find with fast radio bursts is that the
7:54
bursts are, ah, um, dispersed.
7:57
That's the technical term, which is a little
8:00
bit like the way a prism breaks up the light
8:03
of the sun or a white light into a
8:06
spectrum, spectrum of colors. The same
8:09
sort of thing happens as radio waves travel
8:12
through space. You've got this spike of
8:14
radiation, but as it goes through space,
8:17
this dispersion phenomenon takes place. And
8:20
the result is, uh, that the different
8:23
frequencies are spread out in time. So,
8:26
um, if I remember rightly, I'm not a radio
8:28
astronomer, the, um,
8:32
short wave, the higher frequencies arrive
8:34
before the lower frequencies. Is that right?
8:37
I think that's right. Yes, it is. Um,
8:40
and the high frequencies are high first. But
8:43
this burst, um, in different frequencies,
8:45
it's still a spike of radiation. But you're
8:48
now looking at almost like you've dispersed
8:50
it into a spectrum.
8:51
You're looking at different frequencies.
8:54
And so the lower frequencies arrive later.
8:57
Now that tells you
9:00
something about the space that the
9:03
radio waves have been traveling through.
9:05
Because there is what we call the
9:06
intergalactic medium. Uh, and
9:09
that is basically a very
9:11
rarefied, um, gas, if
9:14
you like. Although you're talking about one
9:16
atom per cubic meter or thereabouts. It's
9:19
that sort of rarefaction. Uh,
9:22
but there's enough of it. Because you're
9:23
coming through these great distances. There's
9:25
enough of that gas to have the effect of
9:28
dispersing this radiation. So the amount of
9:31
dispersion tells you how much
9:33
gas there is. That the radio waves have
9:36
traveled through. And that was the
9:38
breakthrough made about five years ago. By a
9:41
team of Australian scientists. Led by
9:45
a, um, fantastic young gentleman called
9:47
J.P. marchant. I think it was Jean Pierre,
9:51
um, uh. A wonderful radio
9:54
astronomer in Western Australia. A young man,
9:57
uh, two weeks after this breakthrough paper
10:00
had been, uh, released, he died.
10:04
Uh, an absolute tragedy, this huge
10:06
breakthrough. Yeah. And uh, I think he had a
10:09
heart attack, if I remember rightly.
10:11
Heidi Campo: It, uh, was probably the paper.
10:13
Professor Fred Watson: Whatever it was, um, it was.
10:16
It absolutely rocked the Australian
10:18
astronomical community. This new knowledge
10:21
that had been created. And he was the lead
10:23
author on the paper. Sadly, he died.
10:26
Um, however, that work has now been
10:29
carried on at other
10:31
radio astronomy observatories.
10:33
Which brings us to the story today. And
10:36
this is a paper that has been released, um,
10:39
by astronomers at the center for
10:41
Astrophysics, uh, the Harvard
10:44
Smithsonian center for Astrophysics, cfa. Uh,
10:47
and what they've done is they've taken this
10:49
work a step further. Because they've looked
10:51
at many, many more fast radio bursts. As
10:53
you'd expect, these things are coming, um,
10:56
um, um, are being constantly observed.
10:59
Um, and what they've done is they have
11:02
looked again at, uh. The structure
11:06
or the constituents of the
11:08
intergalactic medium. The space between the
11:10
galaxies. And exactly as the Maaschant,
11:14
uh, uh, uh, work. Um, proposed
11:17
five years ago. They're able to use this
11:21
as a measure of just what the.
11:23
What the contents of the intergalactic
11:26
medium are. Ah, and they find that it
11:29
is enough to account for what
11:32
we call the missing matter. Now, this is not
11:34
dark matter that we're talking about. This is
11:36
normal matter. Um, protons,
11:38
electrons. The normal stuff which we are
11:41
familiar with. Which in fact, uh. Is only
11:44
something like 20% of the amount of matter in
11:47
the universe. The rest of it is the dark
11:49
matter. That's something else. But even that
11:52
normal matter that we know about. When we
11:54
look at the calculations as to what should
11:56
emerge from the Big Bang. The um, event in
11:59
which the universe was formed, we can't find
12:02
enough of it. That's why we call it the
12:04
missing matter. But it now Turns out
12:07
that this combined set of
12:09
researchers looking at the intergalactic
12:12
medium find that there is enough matter in
12:14
the intergalactic medium to account for that
12:17
missing matter. So this is a problem solved.
12:20
As you said at the beginning. Yeah, the two
12:23
things absolutely dovetail together. The
12:25
predicted amount of matter in the universe is
12:27
now exactly what we find when we include
12:30
this intergalactic medium. So it's
12:33
amazing research. It's, um, very fitting
12:36
that it should be our lead story on this
12:37
edition of Space Nuts, because, um, as I
12:40
said, it's got an Australian content. The
12:42
thrusters now moved to other observatories,
12:44
but we have this global picture now, uh,
12:47
of what dark matter can tell us. Sorry, what,
12:50
uh, fast radio burst can tell us about. Not
12:53
dark matter, but the missing matter of the
12:55
universe.
12:56
Heidi Campo: Oh, that's wonderful. Uh, this reminds me
12:59
when I'm trying to do math unsuccessfully,
13:01
and I'm trying to find why I can't get the
13:03
right answer and I forgot to carry the one.
13:05
It turns out it was there the whole time. The
13:08
answer was right there. I just forgot to grab
13:11
that one little piece to pull it in to get
13:13
the correct answer. But they solved such a
13:16
complex, uh, problem. And isn't
13:19
that kind of funny sometimes the answers are
13:21
right there in plain sight.
13:22
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly. It's in plain sight.
13:25
Heidi Campo: But it's like you said, one atom per.
13:28
What did you say it was?
13:29
Professor Fred Watson: 1 cubic meter? It's something like that. It's
13:32
that kind of level. It's very. A few atoms
13:34
per cubic meter, perhaps. Um, but yes,
13:37
uh, it's in plain sight. But you need.
13:41
The thing that's made this possible, this
13:43
detection possible is the fact that these
13:45
bursts of radiation are so short,
13:48
they're milliseconds. And that means that as
13:50
they're dispersed, uh, into different
13:52
frequency bands as they pass through the,
13:55
the, the universe, um, you still can, you can
13:57
detect this dispersion of the frequency
14:00
bands, whereas with a constant radio signal,
14:02
you wouldn't, you wouldn't do that. Um, you
14:04
know that you've just got us radiation
14:07
coming all the time. There's nothing to tell
14:09
you whether the, whether the, um,
14:12
lower frequencies are slower than the faster
14:14
frequencies. There's nothing to tell you
14:16
that. Yeah.
14:19
Wonderful detective work. Yeah.
14:21
Heidi Campo: Oh, yeah, it's fantastic.
14:22
So by these radio, uh, astronomers then.
14:26
So they do radio astronomy. What is your
14:29
specialty? And then if you're not. So I also,
14:31
I also, I have to make a joke, you know, it's
14:33
not Space nuts if there's not a few dad
14:34
jokes. And I've Been. I have not been holding
14:37
up my end of, um, filling Andrew's shoes. So
14:40
you may not be a radio astronomer, but
14:42
technically you are an astronomer on the
14:43
radio.
14:45
Professor Fred Watson: That's correct. Yeah. I like it. I
14:48
like it. Yes. Your dad jokes will go far,
14:50
Heidi. Um, uh, so
14:53
my specialty, um, and
14:56
really my work now is in sort of policy and
14:59
things of that sort rather than observing.
15:02
Uh, but yes, for 40 years I guess
15:05
I was, um, in fact more than that, nearly 50
15:07
years, I was an optical astronomer. And that
15:09
means I use telescopes that look at visible
15:12
light, um, so giant telescopes
15:15
that have a very shiny mirror at the
15:17
base of them. In fact, the one I used
15:19
principally was the, um, 3.9 meter
15:22
Anglo Australian Telescope, uh, which we
15:25
celebrated the 50th birthday on last year.
15:27
Heidi Campo: Oh, happy, happy birthday, telescope.
15:32
Professor Fred Watson: 0G and I feel fine space
15:34
nuts.
15:35
Heidi Campo: So with the, uh, ESA's Probe 3
15:38
mission, that telescope, would that count as
15:40
a big mirror telescope?
15:42
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, um, it's a small mirror telescope.
15:46
Heidi Campo: Okay.
15:46
Professor Fred Watson: Um, but it is an optical telescope. That's
15:49
right. So it's looking at visible light and
15:51
lovely, uh, segment segue there to the next
15:53
story, Heidi. Um, so this
15:56
again, you know, needs a little bit of
15:58
background to, uh, get over its
16:01
significance. But this, I think is a
16:03
fantastic story, uh, because,
16:06
um, it kind of means, um, that
16:09
you can make an eclipse of the sun anytime
16:11
you like. Uh, as you know,
16:13
eclipses, ah, are rare.
16:16
Um, well, in any given place on the Earth,
16:19
they're a rare phenomenon. Uh, that's to say
16:22
when the moon exactly blots out the
16:24
disk of the sun or blacks it out. Uh, that
16:27
means the Moon's shadow on the Earth's, uh,
16:29
surface passes over different
16:32
places. Uh, we call it the path of
16:35
totality because that's where you see a total
16:37
eclipse. And that's only narrow. It's only 50
16:40
to 100 kilometers wide, um, 30 to
16:43
60 miles, I guess, something like that. So,
16:46
uh, um,
16:48
ah, it's a rare phenomenon at any one place.
16:51
And that's why, uh, when eclipses come along,
16:54
people chase all over the world. Uh,
16:56
everybody here in Australia, or certainly the
16:59
state I'm in, New South Wales, are, uh,
17:01
looking forward to July 2028, when an
17:04
eclipse, um, will be seen from this
17:07
state. And in fact, the Moon's shadow will
17:09
pass directly over Sydney. So Sydney's going
17:12
to be the center of the world's astronomers
17:15
for, um, a short time. In
17:17
2028 it is already, of course, but, uh, in a
17:20
different sort of way. Anyway. One of the
17:22
reasons why scientists Asked
17:25
so keen on watching eclipses is
17:28
because when the moon's disk blots out the
17:31
visible disk of the sun, what you see
17:34
is the sun's outer atmosphere. It's corona.
17:37
And, uh, this is a, it's a almost
17:40
ethereal glow around the sun
17:43
which has got structure in it that comes from
17:45
the magnetic field of the sun, uh, that
17:48
dictates what the corona looks like. There
17:50
are many mysteries, uh, that we don't
17:53
understand about the corona. One is why its
17:55
temperature is so high. Uh, the
17:58
sun's surface temperature, around
18:01
5,500 degrees. This
18:04
is degrees Celsius, the temperature of the
18:07
corona, about 15 million degrees.
18:10
Um, you're talking about this huge difference
18:13
between the bit that we can
18:15
see and the bit that is invisible
18:18
except when you have an eclipse.
18:22
That's because it's very faint compared with,
18:24
you know, with the disk of the sun. Uh, and
18:27
the mystery is, why is the corona so hot?
18:29
So, uh, the corona. And it's thought to be.
18:32
We actually think it's all about magnetic
18:33
fields again. Anyway, the corona is an
18:36
interesting area of study, but you
18:39
can't see it unless you're in an eclipse.
18:42
Now the problem, you might think, okay, well,
18:44
why don't we make a telescope with a little
18:46
disk that blots out the light of the sun so
18:49
that you can see the corona around it. And
18:51
there are such telescopes, they're called
18:53
coronagraphs. That's the name,
18:56
gives away what it's for. They only work
18:59
where they really only work in a vacuum
19:02
because the atmosphere tends to, um, scatter
19:05
the light and blocks out the view of the
19:08
corona. So one or two very high mountain
19:11
sites have had coronagraphs used on them, and
19:13
you can also use them in space. But
19:16
they have their limitations.
19:18
And this gets us to the story that you
19:20
mentioned, Proba 3. This is actually two
19:23
satellites which are operated by the European
19:26
space agen. Um, and they are
19:29
about, if I remember rightly, 150 meters
19:31
apart. Uh, they are
19:34
arranged so that one has
19:37
a sort of disk, one has got a
19:40
disk on it. Um, it's disk shaped, if I can
19:42
put it that way. And if you line that up with
19:45
the sun as seen from the other
19:48
spacecraft, which has a telescope on it,
19:50
probably with a shiny mirror in there
19:52
somewhere, um, and that lets you
19:55
blot out the sun's disk. And it gives you
19:58
the best view that we have outside
20:01
a solar eclipse of the solar
20:03
corona. Uh, and the reason why this is in the
20:06
news at the moment is because we're just
20:08
starting to see the first images from this
20:11
Prober 3 mission. It's a European Space
20:13
Agency mission, uh, and we can see
20:16
the uh, corona, uh, of the sun
20:19
in great detail, just as we would
20:21
if we were watching an eclipse from the uh,
20:24
Earth. Uh, and so this is a step
20:27
forward. It's a new technology. Uh, it is
20:30
going to allow us to monitor the Sun's corona
20:33
um, in real time, uh, and for
20:36
a long period. I think they're proposing, uh,
20:38
is it 1000 hours of observing
20:41
of the Sun? Yes, it will create about
20:44
1,000 hours of images over its two year
20:46
mission and anyone will be able to download
20:49
the data. So it's a uh, really
20:52
interesting step forward by the European
20:54
Space Agency and the scientists who are
20:56
working uh, on this piece, um, of equipment
20:59
to let us see the Sun's corona over the next
21:01
two years in great detail.
21:04
Heidi Campo: It's fantastic. I'm looking at the images
21:06
right now and I've got to say, um,
21:09
some of you may get this reference. It looks
21:12
just like the um, late 90s, early
21:15
2000s Windows media player
21:18
visualizers.
21:19
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
21:20
Heidi Campo: Doesn't it? It's got such a,
21:23
interesting hue to it. I feel like I could be
21:25
listening to like early 2000s techno music
21:28
with these images.
21:30
Professor Fred Watson: We can probably provide that somewhere
21:33
some space techno.
21:34
Heidi Campo: My other question, since this will be um,
21:37
available to the public, would this be a good
21:40
opportunity for any citizen scientists
21:43
to tap into and are there any programs that
21:45
you know of that people may want to be paying
21:47
attention to if they are interested in
21:49
getting involved in citizen science?
21:51
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's a great question. And um, you
21:54
know there is a wonderful array of
21:56
citizen science projects which are ah,
21:59
related to astronomy, um,
22:03
um, various ones. The zooniverse is the
22:06
sort of, um, I guess you've probably heard of
22:08
the zooniverse, which is a kind of cluster of
22:11
citizen science projects, um,
22:14
that um, brings to bear
22:18
the resources of our citizen uh, science
22:20
scientists, uh, to bear on astronomical
22:23
data. And you can bet your life that there
22:26
will be, I don't know, uh, particularly that
22:29
this is the case, but you can bet your life
22:31
that there will be people poring over these
22:33
coronagraph Images from Probe 3 looking uh,
22:36
to see what we might discover about the
22:39
solar corona. Um, it is uh, I think it's
22:42
a, uh, really, if I can put it this
22:45
way, it's a project that is ripe for
22:47
exploitation with citizen science.
22:50
Heidi Campo: Yeah, and I'm such a, you guys have probably
22:53
heard me talk about citizen science programs
22:55
on here before because I'm such a big
22:56
advocate for everybody getting involved
22:59
Because I, uh, you know, don't save it for
23:02
the brilliant people with the PhDs. We love
23:04
you, Fred. You're wonderful. But if we can
23:07
export some of this work to the whole pool of
23:09
talent, and I've always learned this, the
23:12
more I get involved in the space industry is
23:14
don't let. Don't let you know, don't be the
23:17
person to tell yourself, no, I can't do that.
23:19
Let somebody else tell you. Just start
23:21
pursuing it. If you're interested in it, get
23:24
involved. There's so many opportunities and
23:26
there's so much to learn. We still have
23:29
more questions than we have answers. So there
23:32
is absolutely. Here's a pun. Here's another
23:35
pun. I'm. I got two for them today. There's
23:37
space for you. There's space for you to get
23:40
involved in space. We need your
23:42
help. So citizen science program programs,
23:45
um, are a fantastic way
23:48
to get involved. And I think this is
23:51
a little bit more of my bumpier segue. Unless
23:53
you had something you wanted to say, Fred.
23:54
Professor Fred Watson: No, no, I'm just a big fan of cities and
23:57
science as well. I think it's fabulous what
23:59
is achieved by that. Um, and I
24:01
wholeheartedly agree with your comments
24:04
there, Heidi, but, yeah, ah, I think you had
24:06
a nice segue coming up there, which I
24:07
probably ruined now.
24:09
Heidi Campo: Oh, no, I think it was going to be a pretty
24:10
bumpy one. So this is. Okay. Um, I will say
24:13
I do know that actually, um, some.
24:16
I remember because I got some, um,
24:19
they called it the NASA TOPS program.
24:21
TOPS Standard for something. Open science
24:24
repository, something like that. But it's,
24:26
um, it's just a casual certification
24:29
that you can get online from. It's an
24:31
official NASA thing that you can get and just
24:33
put it on your LinkedIn. But they just talked
24:35
about a lot of different citizen science
24:37
programs. And I believe I remember reading,
24:40
if I, If I read this correctly, a, um.
24:42
Lot of breakthroughs have happened
24:45
with hurricane technology and, um,
24:49
early detection of hurricanes through citizen
24:51
science. Because that was one of the first
24:55
places that we tapped into citizen science.
24:58
Don't quote me on the decades. I'm terrible
25:00
at my history. But the first,
25:02
um, cited use of citizen
25:05
science was the former
25:08
belief was that wind
25:11
always moved one direction because if you're
25:14
standing in the wind, it's coming at you one
25:15
direction. And this guy was the I. And I. I
25:18
wish I had his name. I'm so sorry. But he was
25:20
like, hey, I think wind moves in different
25:23
patterns. And so what he did is he,
25:26
um, had a weather event and he had People
25:28
posted all over the place and
25:31
he's like, tell me which direction the wind
25:33
was moving. And they reported back to him
25:36
and he discovered that yes, the
25:39
weather was not always. The wind was not
25:41
always moving one direction. So that was uh.
25:43
I don't know if you know more about that
25:44
story.
25:44
Professor Fred Watson: I don't know that but that exactly. It's uh,
25:47
you know, it, that's. It's wonderful when
25:50
people have an idea like that and managed to
25:53
muster the resources that um, he clearly did
25:55
and get the results. And citizen science is a
25:58
lot like that.
26:01
Okay, we checked all four systems and.
26:03
Heidi Campo: Team with a go space navigation. Yeah.
26:06
So here's my bumpy segue to the last
26:09
article. Um, I guess we can say if we're
26:11
keeping it with the detective, uh, metaphor
26:13
for this episode is this is a clue. So we
26:16
had the first story was we've
26:19
solved something. The second one is we have
26:22
um. Well I guess the second one was the clue.
26:24
And this last one is there is a mystery. This
26:27
is a open case yet to be solved, which
26:30
is a mysterious link between
26:33
Earth's magnetism and
26:35
oxygen. So this is an open
26:38
mystery. We don't know the answers.
26:40
Professor Fred Watson: We don't uh, um. And it
26:43
is um, really quite a significant
26:46
result Heidi, that um,
26:49
uh, has come from scientists. Actually
26:52
One of them is at my alma mater, the
26:54
University of St. Andrews in Scotland,
26:55
Scotland's oldest university, founded in
26:58
1413. I was there shortly afterwards, as I
27:01
always tell people. Um, um. It's
27:04
uh, the university uh, of um, of St.
27:07
Andrews and also uh, scientists at the
27:09
University of leed. So this is work in the
27:11
uk. Um, the
27:14
story is uh,
27:17
basically uh, that we have
27:20
this trend, uh, that is
27:22
detectable um
27:25
by techniques that
27:28
are uh, quite um,
27:32
remote from what we do in the world of
27:34
astronomy. Uh, it's um,
27:37
what was it?
27:39
Biogeochemistry I think was one of them.
27:42
So what scientists have looked at,
27:45
uh, what you might call proxies,
27:48
uh, um, things that tell you
27:51
about something else. And uh, for
27:54
example one of the examples is this, uh,
27:57
if you look back through the geological
28:00
record you can find evidence
28:03
in the geological strata of
28:05
periods where there were lots and lots of
28:08
wildfires, um, what we call bushfires here in
28:11
Australia, forest fires elsewhere.
28:14
So you can find evidence of that. And
28:17
the scientists are saying that is a proxy
28:20
for the number of these wildfires, is a
28:23
proxy for the amount of oxygen that was in
28:25
the atmosphere at the time. Because
28:28
uh, wildfires spread much more readily
28:31
if you've got an oxygen rich atmosphere than
28:33
they do if you've got less.
28:35
Heidi Campo: Oh, interesting.
28:36
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. So it's that kind of work that's been
28:39
done. Also, um,
28:42
something that's a little bit more directly
28:44
measurable, uh, is the history of
28:47
the Earth's magnetic field. And that's one of
28:49
the ways that we know that the Earth's
28:51
magnetic poles reverse every, probably
28:54
three or four times every million years,
28:56
something like that. Uh, so the, the
28:58
magnetic field of the Earth is something that
29:00
we can get from the alignment of grains
29:03
of crystals in rocks. Um,
29:05
and that tells you, you know, how well these
29:08
are aligned, tells you about the intensity of
29:10
the magnetic field. Excuse me. So
29:14
this group of scientists. Sorry, I've got,
29:17
uh, an oxygen rich, uh, throat at the moment.
29:19
It's wanting to come. So these groups of
29:22
scientists have looked at something that
29:24
nobody would have expected, uh, to
29:27
correlate, but they find that
29:30
there is a correlation between,
29:33
and this is looking back over half a billion
29:35
years. So they're looking back in time over
29:38
500 million years. When you plot the strength
29:41
of the Earth's, uh, magnetic field over that
29:43
period and compare it with the
29:46
amount of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere
29:49
over that period, the two graphs match
29:52
very, very closely. Um, there's
29:55
clearly a link, uh, between the
29:58
amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, the
30:00
intensity of the magnetic field.
30:03
The mystery is,
30:06
is that link telling you that
30:09
more magnetism means more oxygen and,
30:12
or more oxygen means more magnetism?
30:14
Or is it telling you that there is something
30:16
else going on that affects both the magnetic
30:19
field and the oxygen as well, and
30:23
affects them both in the same way? So some
30:25
other process that we don't really understand
30:28
yet. So a really big mystery, but
30:31
the reason why I'm mentioning this on, um,
30:34
space knots is that it feeds into
30:36
our understanding of what might,
30:40
uh, constitute places where life evolves
30:42
elsewhere in the universe. Because we know,
30:45
ah, most of the oxygen in the Earth's
30:47
atmosphere actually comes from biological
30:49
processes. It's what we call a biomarker.
30:52
Somebody looking at the Earth from outside
30:54
and seeing that much oxygen,
30:57
uh, if they have life of the same
31:00
kind that we have, they could say, yes,
31:01
that's a biomarker that is marking, uh.
31:04
Heidi Campo: Similar to K2 18B, right?
31:06
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly. That's right. Although
31:09
it was, uh, what was it? Dimethyl
31:12
sulfide was the biomarker that was
31:15
caused for the exoplanet
31:17
K2.18b, which is still of great
31:20
interest to astrobiologists. We don't really
31:22
know first of all whether that, uh,
31:25
um, finding of dimethyl sulfide is real.
31:28
Or whether it's being confused with some
31:31
other molecule. The signature in the spectrum
31:34
that the James Webb telescope took, um, and
31:36
we don't actually know whether that is
31:38
genuinely a biomarker in
31:41
an environment different from the Earth's. So
31:43
lots of questions attached to that too. But
31:47
this new finding, the link between magnetism
31:49
and oxygen, whatever causes it,
31:52
uh, may be something that will feed into
31:56
the understanding of the way life processes
31:58
work, uh, by astrobiologists and perhaps
32:01
will tell us more about the kinds of places
32:04
that we might look for extraterrestrial life,
32:07
uh, when we get the next generation of giant
32:09
telescopes with big shiny mirrors. Uh, and
32:12
the biggest shiny mirror of all is going to
32:14
be the European Extremely Large Telescope.
32:16
Should come online in 2028. Its mirror is
32:19
39 meters in diameter.
32:22
It's huge. Anyway.
32:24
Heidi Campo: Yeah, well, I mean, uh,
32:27
this is, uh, important to consider. This is
32:29
one of the first things they teach you
32:31
anytime you go to any kind of, of STEM
32:33
related program is okay.
32:35
Correlation does not mean causation.
32:38
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly.
32:38
Heidi Campo: And you said this. I mean, it's like we don't
32:40
know if it's this, this, or this. And,
32:43
and it's. I mean, I'm looking at the trend
32:46
lines right now. I mean, they are
32:49
right there. It's so easy to jump to the
32:51
conclusion and say, yeah, these are so
32:54
highly correlated. But then we just have to
32:56
remind ourselves why. And we don't know. This
32:59
one's a mystery.
33:00
Professor Fred Watson: It's a mystery. And, um, well, I'm sure
33:03
it will be the focus of a lot of really
33:05
interesting research over the next year or
33:07
two. Maybe Heidi, you and I'll talk about
33:10
whatever they find in a Space Nuts down the
33:13
track sometime. Uh, but yeah, we should,
33:15
um, keep an eye on this one because it's a
33:17
very exciting result.
33:20
Heidi Campo: Well, I think that that is a good segue to
33:22
kick it back to you, our listeners. We've
33:24
talked about a lot of fun things,
33:27
questions, answers, solutions, and more
33:29
questions and citizen science in there. Um,
33:32
I think we should just take this time to
33:34
encourage you guys to stay involved because
33:36
you can be a part of these breakthroughs.
33:39
And then instead of writing in just simple
33:42
questions here on SpaceNets, you can also
33:44
say, hey, as a citizen scientist myself, I
33:47
have discovered this. What do you think about
33:49
these findings? And I think that would be
33:51
really neat to hear those kinds of statements
33:53
from you guys.
33:55
Professor Fred Watson: Absolutely. We could then tell the world.
33:56
Remember where you heard it first here on
33:59
Space Nuts.
34:00
Heidi Campo: What a perfect, perfect ending. Um, Fred,
34:03
this has been such a fun conversation.
34:05
Professor Fred Watson: Thank you so much My pleasure always, Heidi.
34:08
And, uh, I look forward to talking to you
34:09
next time.
34:11
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