Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #462: Dark Matter Mysteries, Gravitons & Interferometry Insights

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#462: Dark Matter Mysteries, Gravitons & Interferometry Insights · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, it's Andrew Duncley from Space Nuts. Here we
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: go again with a Q and A episode.
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: I hope you're well.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us once again, and on this episode
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: we are going to be answering questions about dark matter
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and dark energy. However, the twist on this is how
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: do we predict movement in our solar system without accounting
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: for dark energy and dark matter. That's a good question. Interferometry.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Somebody wants to know if we can use space telescopes
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: for that, and they're also asking about the life of Brian.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: We'll get into that shortly. Gravitons and whether or not
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: they are responsible for gravitational waves and biblical floods. That's
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: all coming up on a Q and A edition of
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts fifteen.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Second guidance is in Terannal ten nine ignition Space Nuts
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: or three two nice as when I report it.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Neil's good and joining us once again is his good self,
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred what's an astronomer at large? Hello Fred, Hello.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: Andrew, good to see you.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Good to see you too. And the voice is still struggling,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: so please forgive me. I might sound like what's like
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: a famous news reader.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: If I keep that.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, I can bang it on at the moment, but
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: hopefully it'll go away real soon.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Shall we get started.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: We've got a lot to get through, So we've got
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: a couple of text questions, a couple of audio questions.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I think we'll just just plunge on in. Our first
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: question comes from Trent Hello from Saint John's, Newfoundland, Canada.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It's my understanding the existence of dark matter and dark
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: energy first became necessary to explain why stars at the
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: edges of galaxies are unable to escape the gravity of
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the galaxy.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: They live in.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: However, the existence of dark energy and dark matter is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: not necessary to accurately predict the relationships between the bodies
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: and our own solar system. If dark energy and dark
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: matter make up ninety six percent of the universe, why
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: is it not necessary to predict the relationships between the planets, moons,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: et cetera in our solar system? Is its existence kept
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: to a minimum within the bubble that is our solar system? Also,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: I have a question for Andrew. Is Hugh a real person?
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: If so, what do you have him on some dime?
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: I love the podcast, Please don't stop making it. Love
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you guys, Love you too. Trent I'll answer the second
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: question first. Yes, Hugh is a real person. There, he
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: is there. Look, can't just see him? Hang on, My
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: name is Hugh. It is good to be a part
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: of the show.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: No, he's real. He is real.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: He runs the whole company actually, and he's been with
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: it since the very beginning. And yeah, he just sits there.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And yes, look, we have asked him to come on
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: the show and he declines, can't.
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: Look.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: You know, he's an old radio man from way back.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: I actually met Hugh at a radio station in Newcastle
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: when I was in high school and did job experience.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: This is a true story. I'd written him a letter
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: asking him how to get in radio and he never
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: answered me. And I confronted him on that when I
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: was doing job experience and he said, oh, well, too bad, and.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: I thought, oh, very nice.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Anyway, he ended up becoming my boss at the ABC,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: and here we are now working together on this podcast.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a crazy world the way it all
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: works out. I saved that story up because he didn't
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: remember me, but I recognized him and finally put two
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: and two together. The first time I saw him coming
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: up the driveway at the radio station in Dubohre and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I went, oh my gosh, I know.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Who that is.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: And it all sort of unfolded from there. But I
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: saved the story until the day I left the ABC
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: and I emailed Hugh and said, guess.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: What and told him that story. Yeah. So yes, Israel Israel.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Whether or not it'll ever come on the show remains
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: to be seen, but put enough pressure on and you
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: just never know your luck. Lovely bloke, and we really
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: appreciate him, and I won't say anything nice about him
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: ever again. Now, let's let's try and tackle Trent's question
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: about dark energy dark matter and why it doesn't influence
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: the movements of our planets within our solar system, given
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the fact that dark energy and dark matter makeup ninety
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: six percent of the universe or thereabouts.
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's great questions, and it sort of comes about
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: in terms of mutters of scale, if I put it
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: that way. So, dark energy is something whose existence only
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: becomes apparent when you're looking at things which are millions
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: of light years away, and it's you know, it is.
• 5:13
  Speaker 4: It is a Its effect is to cause the expansion
• 5:18
  Speaker 4: of the universe to accelerate. Neither that expansion nor acceleration
• 5:25
  Speaker 4: are prominent on scales that you know, are small enough
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: to think about planets and stars or even galaxies actually,
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: so you know, our galaxy is not being torn apart
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: because the expansion of the universe, and that's because gravity
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: is by far the most significant force over that kind
• 5:46
  Speaker 4: of scale length. When it comes to dark matter, that's
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: an interesting one and basically the Solar System is immersed
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: in dark matter. It's a it's in a blob of
• 5:59
  Speaker 4: dark matter, which is kind of the size of the galaxy,
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: and so it is on scales relating to planets, it
• 6:07
  Speaker 4: is perfectly uniform and so there it doesn't have any
• 6:12
  Speaker 4: gravitational influence. We're sort of inside it, this uniform volume
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: of dark matter. So the it's the even though it's
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: you know, it's it outweighs normal matter when you look
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: at the sum totals, when you when you look at
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: the way objects in the Solar System behave, it's simply
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: the gravitational pull of the the objects themselves that become important.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: That background, if I put it that way, of dark
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: matter is irrelevant because it's completely uniform. So it's but
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: there are interesting questions, and you know, the the existence
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: of dark matter and dark energy is not just because
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: we see galaxies that would tear themselves apart if they
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: was nothing there other than what you can see. Galaxy
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: clusters are the same, They would fly apart if all
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: you could see was all that there is. It's not
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: just those that tell us about the existence of dark matter.
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: We've got gravitational lensing effects which come from dark matter,
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: and we can look at the universe as at all.
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: We were talking in the last episode about the angle
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: Australian telescope and the way it's mapped the galaxies around it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: The structure of material within those galaxies also tell you
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: about dark energy and dark matter. In the science of cosmology.
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: It's quite complicated stuff, but it actually reveals that both
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: of them are real phenomena, and so it is still
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: a mystery. It's still the biggest mystery that we confront
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: I think in exploring the universe, with the exception of
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: are we alone, it's an even bigger one. But yeah,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: dark matter and dark energy pretty good.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and a lot of work being done to try
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: and unravel the mystery. But so far we yeah, we
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: get more questions than answers. But yeah, one day we'll
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: figure it out, hopefully sooner rather than later, but you
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: just never know.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: We may never find out.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Hopefully that won't be the case, but there's so much
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to learn.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Trent.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Great question. As always, Our next question comes from Sunny Queensland.
• 8:28
  Speaker 5: I think, hello, Fred and Andrew, it's blow here. I'm Welburn.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Do you hold up the shortest.
• 8:33
  Speaker 5: Name you listen?
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: What is?
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: I have a question for you. It's a keoretical one.
• 8:38
  Speaker 5: I was wondering if it is theoretically possible to interferometry
• 8:44
  Speaker 5: with the space telescopes and ground based telescopes. So we
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: have the Hubble telescope, we have the Jam's web, and
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: we'll have a number of large ground based telescopes. Can
• 8:55
  Speaker 5: we actually do an intraferometry imaging of a star away
• 9:00
  Speaker 5: object using these objects? Using these telescopes, That's how we
• 9:06
  Speaker 5: got the center drop the black hole in Sagittarius a star,
• 9:09
  Speaker 5: and I think we can do something similar with those
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: two space telescopes and and then brought the ground based telescopes.
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: I was wondering if that's to really be possible. Speaking
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: of theories, has anybody done a study or between the
• 9:25
  Speaker 5: correlation of the name Brian and astronomy. I'll give you
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: four data points. There's Brian May, Brian Cox, Brian Schmidt
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: and Brian Green. Surely they're not consequences anyway, looking forward
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: to your response.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Thanks Bo.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: There's also Brian from Sunny Queensland. Sorry, Bro, I don't
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: know why I thought you were from Queensland. Maybe because
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: I've got friends visiting from Queensland at the moment, queens
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and stuck in my head. But no, you're from Sunless Victoria.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: So yes, thanks for the Thanks for the question, Bo,
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: what did he say? The shortest name in our in
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: our listening audience. But you'd have to be careful because
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: you know, admitting that your name is b oh, it's
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: probably probably not the safest bed.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: In the world.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: He could get ridiculed for that one bow. But thanks
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: very much for the question. Let's go with the Brian
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: angle first, Fred, Brian's in astronomy.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I love this. Yeah, this.
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: Bunch for former Director of the Australian Astronomical Observatory, Brian Boyle. Now, yeah,
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: you Zealand tall O'Brian. If you're listening, you don't think
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: he does, but if he does, that's where he is.
• 10:41
  Speaker 4: So but you could say the same for Fred, you know,
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: because Fred Hoyle. Yeah, Fred.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Fred Kepler, No, I moved that up.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: There are also got one.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: I've got one. I'll go one.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Freddie Mercury.
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: There you were, Freddie Mercury.
• 11:04
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: No, it's not far off, is it. Brian May and
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: Freddie Mercury like that. They were. They were a lot
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: of quite interesting. There are a lot of astronomers with
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: Fred as their middle name, including David Marley, actually David
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: Frederick Marlin. There were other Fredericks too, So I suspect
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: there's not a link that you can make. I think
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: a more interesting one is not to do with names.
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: But I do remember many years ago when the old
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: Siding Spring Lodge still existed, the one that burned down
• 11:39
  Speaker 4: in the One Belong fire in twenty thirteen. We used
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: to have evening dinners there for all the astronomers who
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: were on the mountain because they were staying at the lodge.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: They used to have a.
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: Dinner every evening, and conversations that those dinners were where
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: many many collaborations were dreamed up, was quite extraordinary. So
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: sometimes there were twenty astronomers around the table. I do
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: remember one time sitting there and all of the all
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: of the astronomers on one side of the table, everyone
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: was eating soup. All of them on one side of
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: the table were left handed. Yeah, And I thought, surely
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: that was telling us something about astronomers and the way
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: their brains are, because I've left hand too.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: So maybe all of all the threads were left handed,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and all the bright right.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: Right could be it anyway, So curious collaboration, Sorry, curious
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: correlationident I'm looking for Regarding interferometry. Let's come back to
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: it for a minute. Even though we're talking about space.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: It's it.
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: With current technology, it's not possible. And that is, you know,
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: given that you can combine was it eight radio observatories
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: to make the EHT the event Horizon Telescope, all facing
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: one side of the Earth. They were all linked together
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: by very accurate timing. The clocks were the vital part
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: of that. And that's because in radio astronomy, the frequencies
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: are low enough that you can actually you can interrogate
• 13:17
  Speaker 4: the phase of the wave that's coming in. So a
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: wave coming in has a phase, and that means you
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: can concentrate on one particular or determine which part of
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: the wave you're looking at a high bit or a
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: low bit or whatever. Now you can do that in
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: radio astronomy. The frequencies are low enough that you can
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: actually analyze those phases as they're going through, and then
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: you can mix them later in such a way that
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: the phases actually add or subtract from the different telescopes
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: that you're looking at around the world. But that's the whole,
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: you know, that's the whole, not the rezon data. But
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: it's very much the mode of operation of radio telescopes.
• 14:01
  Speaker 4: They all operate, with the exception of single dishes. All
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: the arrays operate on that principle of being able to
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: know what phase your signal is at and then add
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: or subtract at that instant the other ones to form
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: an interferometer, which lets you measure very small angles and
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: identify detail on very small scales. The reason why you
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: can't do that with optical astronomy is simply that the
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: frequencies are too high. There is no technology at the
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: moment that can sample the frequencies of light waves in
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: a way that will be reliable enough to add the
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: signal coming from say the Hubble telescope or the Games
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: web telescope. It may not be far away though, that
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: we do have that technology, because I've seen papers on
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: the use of what's called heterodyne methods, which are what
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: they're used in radio astronomy, trying to apply those to
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: optical seas, even though the frequencies are very high. It's
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: very challenging, but it may one day be possible. It's
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: not at the moment, but it's an interesting idea. And yeah,
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: a nice suggestion book.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, thank you, BO, and good luck defending yourself
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: from the bullies with the name B. This is Space
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Let's take
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: a quick break from the show so I can tell
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  Speaker 1: all the details in our show notes.
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Now back to the show.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Space Nuts.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Well, now our next question Fred, Sorry bo our next
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: fresh question Fred.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: Comes from Vincent.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Photons are the force carrying particle that mediates the electromagnetic
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: force governing the behavior of things like magnetic fields. But
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: they can also form into self propagating electromagnetic field, which
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: we call light. If the hypothetical graviton were to exist,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: could it also form into analogous self propagating graviton waves?
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: What would those be?
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I say graviton waves to distinguish them from what we
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: know as gravity waves under relativity, since I think they
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: would be two different things. Or are they one and
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: the same? Vincent, mm, good question.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: It is a good question.
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: I'm going to be I'm going to make a comment
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: from pedants corner here, Andrew, because gravity waves are things
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: that happen in atmospheres. Gravitational waves, however, are the wabbling
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: of space and time that we can detect. And yes,
• 18:50
  Speaker 4: I told it was from pedance corner. I'm sorry about that. Apologies, Vincent,
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: you know what I mean. So that's an interesting question.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: And what we're talking about here is, you know that
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: nexus between quantum theory and relativity, because relativity is what
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: determines gravity as a waveform, the gravitational waves, whereas quantum
• 19:18
  Speaker 4: mechanics would be what would determine the behavior of gravitons.
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: I don't actually think, though, that there is any need
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: to distinguish the speed of gravitons, which is the same
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: as the speed of photons, light sym atomic electromagnetic particles.
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: I don't think there's any need to distinguish that from
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: the speed of gravitational waves, which we know is also
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: the speed of light. I do understand, you know, the
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: direction that Vincent's coming from in terms of separating these
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: the analogue between that electromagnetic force and the gravitational force,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: and the analogue between photons and gravitoons. Sadly, we don't
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: actually know whether gravisoons exist or that they likely who
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: knows that they do, but we have no theory for it.
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: But that's interesting thinking. I suspect the answeres know that
• 20:24
  Speaker 4: they are one and the same, as you've suggested.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, it's just one of those mysteries that we
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: are yet to resolve. The particle physics, i suppose, is
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: probably one of the most mysterious areas of space science
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: because we've been trying to you know, we've been trying
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: to capture things, We've been trying to study things, the
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Higgs boson, for example, And yeah, they make these little discoveries,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: but then they come up with so many different questions
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: as to why and how and what they actually discovered.
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: It's a little bit weird, to say the very latest.
• 21:10
  Speaker 4: The weirdest thing I read recently, which comes from a
• 21:14
  Speaker 4: quantum physicist, is a paper that suggests and actually I
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: think it was carried there was an interview with this
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: gentleman carried by a new scientist magazine. But this person,
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: who is at the one of the universities in Spain,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: he suggests that the laws of physics aren't really there.
• 21:42
  Speaker 4: There's something to do with subjective consciousness, and that is
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: a really spooky idea. And he's a quantum physicist. So yeah,
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: but I'm afraid I think a lot of this code
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: goes into philosophy as well, sort of metaphysics and things,
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: and some of the terminology I'm afraid lost me go
• 22:04
  Speaker 4: to Wikipedia to look up several of the words that
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: I was reading, and I didn't understand what Wikipedia said either, So.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: It sort of seems to occasionally cross into the realm
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: of we live in a world that's actually just been
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: created by a mass consciousness rather than being a physical reality.
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: Well, I think that's where this I think that's where
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: this argument was heading.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because there are some that actually think that's a
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: thing that we we've basically imagined ourselves into existence. That's
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: that's why I think there's a book in that somewhere,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: but I'm not writing it. I could way too m
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: So what was the answer to Vincent's question, Dono?
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: It was maybe? Maybe? Probably, I mean basically I think
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: it was.
• 23:01
  Speaker 4: I think it's the one, the one in the same
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: spade of gravital is going to be the speed of gravitation.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: Words. Yeah, very good.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: Thanks, excuse me, thanks Vincent, Okay, space nuts. Our final question, well,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: sort of a question the stiatementy weedy thing, which is
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: coming from Christopher.
• 23:27
  Speaker 7: Hello, gentlemen, my name is Christopher Blue, contacting you all
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: again from Bayville, North Carolina, and I just want to
• 23:37
  Speaker 7: tell if y'all had ever heard or read anything about
• 23:42
  Speaker 7: the reasons there were floods. I think this was back
• 23:46
  Speaker 7: in biblical times, but it was because the solar system
• 23:50
  Speaker 7: had ejected a planet, and it had whizzed by Earth,
• 23:54
  Speaker 7: leaving like a snakelike serpent of light across the sky.
• 23:59
  Speaker 7: I didn't know if y'all had heard anything about that,
• 24:01
  Speaker 7: or if I'm just having like a fever drink. But
• 24:04
  Speaker 7: keep it up, guys, love the show, and hey, may
• 24:09
  Speaker 7: it forth me with you?
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Thanks you, thank you, Christopher.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: And then I've got a terrible one line in response
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: to Christopher, No way we're doing that, the boom tishmites. Indeed,
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: hang on, I've got that sound effect. I think I
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: think I've got that sound effect. I can't remember what
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: it's called, though, it's got a weird name, but oh,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: hang on, is this it?
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: There? It is? You can quick love it. What's it called.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: It's called rim shot.
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, well here's a riot. That's right.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Look, you can draw some events in history to astronomy,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: like the Christmas Star, which we've talked about in the past,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and there wasn't anomally and as peronomic a normally around
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: that time.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: That is well documented.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So yeah, the question of whether or not these biblical
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: floods that Christopher refers to could have been coincided with
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: some sort of an astronomical event. Probably not that big
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: a stretch, if you can get the timeline and the proofing.
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think that's right. I think you've got to
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: look at these with an open mind in regard to
• 25:27
  Speaker 4: whether they're describing something that that happened. And there's a
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: good chance.
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: That there were.
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: I draw the line at the Solar System ejecting a
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: planet and a serpent like light across the sky. I think,
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: though so, Christopher's question reminds me of a book written
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: by two colleagues of mine, the Rod Observatory in Edinburgh. Suddenly,
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: I don't actually have a copy of that book. I
• 26:01
  Speaker 4: used to have one because they wrote a nice dedication
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: in it, but I lent it to somebody. It was
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: called The Cosmic Serpent, and that's what Christopher was saying
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: is what reminded me of it. And it's by Victor
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: Klub and William Napier to colleagues. In fact, Victor Club
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: was my boss, and as far as I know, Victory
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: is still going strong, living in retirement in by Year
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: in northern France, in a castle where we visited him
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: about a decade ago. Anyway, the Cosmic Serpent was the
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: book that these two gentlemen wrote in the wake of
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: their discovery that the Earth has probably been bombarded by
• 26:46
  Speaker 4: comics and asteroids. This was all at the end of
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: the nineteen seventies, and unfortunately somebody else kind of picked
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: up the qudos for that discovery. They did write a
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: paper which was published in Nature magazine in nineteen seventy nine,
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: I think, called a Theory of Terrestrial Catastrophism, and it
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: was all about things that may well have hit the
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: Earth and how, you know, not just wiping out the dinosaurs,
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: which was the new idea at that time, and it
• 27:14
  Speaker 4: was that that caused the media star But there may
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: have been episodes in historical times that have caused catastrophes
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: of one sort or another that may have accounted for
• 27:26
  Speaker 4: things like the flood to be ensconced in the certainly
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: initially in the folklore, but eventually in the Pentateuke, the
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: books of Moses.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: So it's it was.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: An interesting theory. I think things have probably moved on
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: quite a lot since then. But these two were hard
• 27:48
  Speaker 4: nosed scientists and they were prepared to look at a
• 27:51
  Speaker 4: lot of the history of Earth in terms of how
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: things like impacts from asteroids might have generated the kind
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: of phenomena that we that we saw. So yeah, it's
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: something that I think we as scientists need to be
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: open minded about. And you know, it goes into other
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: cultures as well as evidence that there was an impact,
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: probably a large meteorite, which gave rise to some of
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: the dream time stories of our first nations people. Here
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: in Australia, certainly up in the Northern Territory, there are
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: stories that tally with a potential impact about ten thousand
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: years ago. You've got a culture here which goes back
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: sixty thousand years so that culture is a living culture
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: with a lot of verbal tradition in it and that's
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: how you know the phenomena like a catastrophic event like
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: a meteorite hitting the ground could be preserved in the
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: stories that they have, the dream type stories.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Fascinating. Yeah, it just reminded me. For this has got
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: nothing to do with Christopher's question, but you were talking
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: about ancient beliefs and ancient events and not to dismiss them.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: But while we were in Turkey the other day, we
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: visited the ruins of Ephesus. I don't know if you've
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: heard of the city of Ephesus, fascinating. Got the walk
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: the original streets of Ephesus and saw the temple, and
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I spotted there that was
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: pointed out to us was the statuette of Artemis.
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: They got us of, got us of the moon.
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Yepo relation to Apollo relation.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: He was, yeah, yeah, and so yeah, the statuette of
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: Artemis is in Ephesus and still still exists there today.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: A Roman statue made around one hundred a d. I think,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: which still sits on a plints in in the city
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: of Ephesus in Turkya. But you blink and you miss it,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: but it's there.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: Amongst all the ruins.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: But you can still see how the city existed and
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: was laid out, and all the buildings. And one of
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: the buildings that remains prominent and has still got quite
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: a solid structure is the brothel, which is right near
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: the road to the port. Because the ocean used to
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: actually reach where Ephesis is no longer nearby because of
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: the changes in earthquakes and things. But yeah, there was
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: a road leading from the port into Ephesus, and one
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: of the first buildings you come to is the brothel.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: So yes, but fascinating place, really interesting place. Has so
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: many interesting ruins in Europe and in Asia and Turkey
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: is no exception. Christopher, thanks for the question about biblical floods. Yeah,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: probably something somewhere has crossed paths with astronomy or space
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: science that's created that possibility. Indeed, and thanks to everyone
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: who's sending questions. Don't forget you can send in questions
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: to All you have to do is jump on our website,
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts podcast dot com or space Nuts dot io
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: and go to the AMA link where you can send
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: us text or audio questions. If you've got a device
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: with a microphone, that's all you need to send us
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: an audio question. We'd love to hear from you. Don't
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: forget to tell us who you are and where you're from. Fred,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: thanks as always for answering everybody's questions.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Much appreciated.
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: I appreciate being here too. Thanks Andrew, take care and
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: the hook Husky voice goes back to normal.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Soon hopefully, Yes, and thanks to hear in the studio
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: for not pestering us with questions. And from me Andrew Dunkley,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Hope you can join us again
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: on the very next episode of Space Nuts. Until then,
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Bye bye.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: I'm the man.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: By there you go, And when I find the when
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I find the intro, I'll hit it and I again
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: say from me and Fred and you bye bye.
• 32:19
  Speaker 6: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast, available at
• 32:24
  Speaker 6: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 32:29
  Speaker 6: You can also stream on demand at fights dot com.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: This has been another quality podcast production from the Nights
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: dot Com