Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Ruby Rains, Scientific Skepticism & Space Surprises: #483

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Ruby Rains, Scientific Skepticism & Space Surprises: #483 · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: While the world takes a little bit of a rest
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: over the Christmas New Year period. We thought we would too,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: but we're not going to leave you hanging. We've dug
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: into the archives and found a few of the biggest
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: episodes of recent times, so sit back and enjoy those,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and we'll be back with new episodes of Space Nuts,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: probably in the middle of January.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: See then, Space Nuts.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: Hello and thank you for joining us on Space Nuts,
• 0:24
  Speaker 3: where we talk astronomy and space science. Great to have
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: your company once again, and coming up on this particular episode,
• 0:32
  Speaker 3: we're going to talk about an exoplanet that has unusual rain.
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: It's raining gemstones and ruby slippers. Well maybe not the
• 0:41
  Speaker 3: ruby slippers, but definitely gemstones, which is very unusual. We'll
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: also be answering some audience questions. Bob wants to talk
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: about research papers and how accurate or otherwise they might be.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: It's all to come on this edition of Space Nuts
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: Channel ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Three two.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: Space Nuts.
• 1:11
  Speaker 5: That's when actually bought it.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Bells good.
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: My name is Andrew Dunkley. I am your host. Thank
• 1:16
  Speaker 5: you for joining us and with us again this week.
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: Because we can't get rid of him really it is
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, how are you.
• 1:28
  Speaker 5: You are the space nuts barnacle you are?
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: That's yeah, I know, it's just just a barnacle on
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: the buck side of space nuts.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: We have a lot to talk about today, so let's
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: get straight to our first topic, and this is a
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: really interesting one. We've talked about exoplanets and even planets
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: and moons in our own Solar system that have unusual
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: kinds of rain, like sulfur rain.
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: And acid rain.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: And I think we talked about a planet one that
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: rained diamonds. Now there's an exoplanet that rains gemstones.
• 2:05
  Speaker 5: What's what's this all about?
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's gemstones among other things. And it's you know,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: there's a lot going on on this exo planet. It's
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: what is it? Well, it is. I think it's a WASP. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: WASP one to one B. WASP is a is a
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: project that developed the detect XO planets by the transit method,
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: the fact that their brightness drops when they pass in
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: front of their parents. Star. WASP one two one is
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: actually a star which is about eight hundred and fifty
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: light years from here. It has a planet which is
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: very close to it. It's a hot jupiter. That's the
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: excuse me, the official description, because it's a big planet
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: and it orbits its parents star once every thirty hours,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: so you know, its year is thirty hours long, Andrew,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: it just doesn't it. But that's what's happening now. That means.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: One of the things that means is that with a
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: you know, with a period that shorts and the distance
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: between the parents star and the planet that's that's small,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: this planet will be tidally locked to its parents star.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: And that is the I guess the key to understanding
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: what's you know, what's going on here? It is it's
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: day side always is permanently facing the parents style. Well
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: that that's a bit of a tortology, really, isn't it,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: because the day side is always facing the parents star.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: But the bottom line is, jeez, this is a good
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: start this morning. The bottom line, yes, so well done,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: thank you. Yes, the planet is rotating at the same
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: rate at which it revolves around its start, like the
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: is rotating at the same rate as it revolves around
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: the Earth. And so you've got this one side of
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: it that permanently faces the heat source and that means
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: one side is hot and the other side is cold. Now,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: given that we can't see these planets directly, you may
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: well ask and Drew, how can you study the day
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  Speaker 2: and night sides of a world like this in detail?
• 4:25
  Speaker 5: That's a good question. Glad I thought of it.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you thought of it too. The answer is
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: it's really clever stuff and needs you know, it needs
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: really quite significant astronomical infrastructure in order to make these observations.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: I should I should mention that the authors of this
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: work come from MIT, Massaitutsetts Institute of Technology, John's Hopskins
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Johns Hopkins University, Caltech, and other US universities.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: It is a myth fall, but it is Massachusetts, Massachusetts,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: is what I tried to say.
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  Speaker 2: That's right. I didn't really anyway, never mind, I didn't
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  Speaker 2: do well with it. But so what how do you
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: How do you detect what's going on on the day
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: and night sides of a world like this? And what
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: you do is you observe the planet and all you
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: can see is the star. That's the only thing that
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: is visible in your telescope. But you observe the star's
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: light throughout the orbital period, of the planet. And given
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: that that's only thirty hours, you don't have to wait
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: it very long. If you're looking from outside the Solar
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: System and trying to do this with Jupiter, you'd be
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: waiting what is it twelve years or something like that.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: It's much longer. No, I think it's five years. Sorry,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: I should do that calculation again. Anyway, thirty hours gives
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: you time to you know, to actually work out exactly
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: what's going on through the different phases of the planet,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: because that's what it's all about. It's like the phases
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: of the moon. We watch the moon going round because
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: it's lit up by the Sun and we can see,
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: you know, progressing from new moon to first quarter to
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: full moon and all the rest of it. And you
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: can do the same thing with an exoplanet. But what
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: you do, what all you're able to measure is the
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: total light from the planet plus the star. But as
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: you'd imagine, that varies throughout the revolution period of the planet.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: When you've got just when the planet is behind the star,
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  Speaker 2: all you've got is the light of the star. And
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: I should add that you're not just observing how bright
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: it is, you're also observing the spectrum of this thing,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: so you're looking in detail at the chemical constituents that
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: is revealed by the light that is coming to you.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: So when the planets behind the star, all her seeing
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  Speaker 2: is the light of the star when the planet shifts
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: slightly in its path around the star, so you can
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: see both. What you've got is effectively you're looking at
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  Speaker 2: the full planet like an equivalent of a full moon.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: It's almost completely illuminated, and that light adds to the
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: light of the star. And so you can then look
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: at how the spectrum has changed, and that is telling
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: you about the atmosphere of the planet itself rather than
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: you know the atmosphere of the star. In fact, what
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: you can do is subtract the star spectrum from the
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: spectrum of the combined planet plus star and you get
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: the planet spectrum. That's how this works, and then that
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: changes throughout the planet's year thirty thirty hours, and eventually
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: you're looking at the backside of the planet, and in
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: fact you have a point where that is superimposed on
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: the star. Once again, you can do some clever work
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: because you can look at you can look at the
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: combined spectrum of the backside of the planet superimposed on
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: the star itself. That combined spectrum. If you subtract out
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: the spectrum of the star itself, it shows you what
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  Speaker 2: chemical constituents again are in the atmosphere of the planet,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: because the light of the star is passing through the
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: atmosphere of the planet, round the edge of it and
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: coming back to Earth. So that's the technique. And what's
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: been found is that this object is quite extraordinary. So
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: it's got a day side that is extremely hot, more
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: than three thousand degrees kelvin. So what that does is
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  Speaker 2: it's known that there is water vapor in the atmosphere
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: of this planet. Well there's water vapor on the night side,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: but on the day side, the water molecules are just
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  Speaker 2: torn apart because of the high temperatures. So you've got
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  Speaker 2: hydrogen and oxygen atoms that are that are you know,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: they're they're independent within the atmosphere. And then it turns
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: out that because of the heat, that generates high pressure
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  Speaker 2: in the day side, which causes winds that blow things
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  Speaker 2: around to the night side. On the night side, it's
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  Speaker 2: cool enough, yeah, for these things to fall back to water,
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  Speaker 2: and so you get water vapor fall forming in the
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  Speaker 2: atmosphere of the of the dark side of the planet.
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  Speaker 2: That the estimate that these these winds are five kilometers
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  Speaker 2: per second, so this is eleven thousand miles per hour.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It's it's a it's sixteen, sixteen or seventeen thousand kilometers
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  Speaker 2: per hour.
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  Speaker 3: Sounds like that's the same as it was in Sydney yesterday.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't get the wind, but we got the rain.
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  Speaker 2: So we got the we got the water vapor, huge,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: huge quantities of rain. Oh gosh, bucket loads of it
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: h two suitably combined back into water vapor. Yes, so
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: that's what they get on the on the dark side
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: of the of this wasp on onto one being. But
• 10:12
  Speaker 2: there's but way, there's more, because it's not just water
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  Speaker 2: that's that's circulating like this. They find that on the
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: night side that the temperature is right to have quite
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I guess the best word is exotic clouds or clouds
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  Speaker 2: of exotic materials, and iron is one of them, and
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  Speaker 2: a mineral, and a mineral that actually is a constituent
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  Speaker 2: in gemstones. That's that's the point that you are making
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  Speaker 2: right at the beginning.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, well then that's that's the journalistic hook isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: It is absolutely so. Yes, to quote the Physics Dog
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  Speaker 2: report on this, on the way around, exotic rain might
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  Speaker 2: be produced, such as liquid gems from the Corundum clouds,
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  Speaker 2: so you know, liquid rubies that would be quite nice.
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  Speaker 2: Actually well yeah, anyway, really quite really quite remarkable stuff.
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  Speaker 2: I should mention that these these observations were made with
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: the Hubble Space telescope. It was one of the spectroscopic
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: cameras on board the Hubble telescope that were that was used.
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  Speaker 2: And fantastic work. Congratulations to the team and to the
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  Speaker 2: jointist who writing about this.
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  Speaker 3: I don't suppose they can tell us exactly what kind
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: of gem stones these.
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  Speaker 5: Might be or Jim Jim Blobs sponents.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're suggesting that it could be maybe Look I
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  Speaker 2: had rubies in my mind, and yeah, maybe rubies and sapphires.
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  Speaker 2: That's that's that's the possibility. Corundum apparently is the minerals
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  Speaker 2: that you know, goes towards these these gemstones.
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  Speaker 3: So it wasn't far wrong with my ruby slippers analogy.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, it's a very nice one though. I like
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  Speaker 2: that very much.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, interesting, all right, that's a fascinating discovery. And if
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: you want to read more about it, you should go
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: to the fizz dot org website. It's not FI double z,
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: that's p h y s dot org website. It's a
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: fabulous website if you want to catch up on that
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: and many other stories. This is Space Nuts with Andrew
• 12:30
  Speaker 3: Dunkley and of course professor Fred Watson.
• 12:35
  Speaker 5: Three Space Nuts.
• 12:39
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  Speaker 5: So that's very helpful as well.
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  Speaker 3: the Space Nuts podcast, and we do appreciate anything anybody
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  Speaker 3: does to keep us up and running. Okay, Fred, let's
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: get into our question segment. This is where people who
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: listen to space and That's send us all sorts of
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: hyperintelligent questions that I've got no clue about. But Fred
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: has an inkling and the first one comes from Bob.
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: This is Bob from Asheville, North Carolina in the US.
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: I have two questions. In two thousand and five, Professor
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: John Ionidis published a highly influential paper in Close Medicine
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: titled why most published research findings are False. He makes
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: the argument, and here I'm quoting that for most studied
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: designs and settings, it is more likely for our research
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: claim to be false than true. It's important to note
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: that he was focusing on medical studies, which have less
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: scientific rigor than physics. He does, however, conclude that, and
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: I'm quoting his paper again, that for many current scientific fields,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: the prevailing bias. My first question for Professor Watson is
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: how often does this happen in your field? Meaning how
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: often our published research findings actually false because of bias
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: or statistical reasons. My second question is hypothetical medicine changes
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: relatively quickly. For example, peptic ulcers were treated with surgery
• 15:08
  Speaker 4: until nineteen eighty four, which is when Barry James Marshall,
• 15:12
  Speaker 4: an Australian physician at Royal Perth Hospital, reported that peptic
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: ulcers were caused by a type of bacteria called He'll
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: go back to pay Lauri. Today ulcers are treated with antibiotics.
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: Professor Watson, suppose you get fast forward one hundred or
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: five hundred years into the future and look back at
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: cosmology and astro and.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: That's where Bob unfortunately got cut off. But we think
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: we've got the nuts and pults of his question, so
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: we're going to take a stab at it for you, Bob.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: But yeah, I guess the first part of his question
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: is about scientific papers, research papers, published works, and how
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: maybe they could misinform or not be quite accurate. Is
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: that something that happens.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: It's a really interesting question. There are I don't think
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: they're in astronomy. There is a strong incentive perhaps or
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: the reason why people should intentionally misinform. I think that
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: is almost always almost always zero. And what research that
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: does bark up the wrong tree. What research of that
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: kind that there is is honest mistakes, like the color
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: of the universe perhaps, well, that's right, that was an
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: honest mistake, Yeah, which was what was?
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: It was kind of I originally said it was aqua,
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: but it turned out to beige.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: It was beige, that's right. And in fact, I remember
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: when I read that paper. This is probably ten to
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: fifteen years ago, and I know the guy who wrote
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: it quite well. I remember when I read that paper
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: thinking this cannot be the case. You can't have a
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: an aqua universe because it's expanding and you know, you've
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: got basically a red shift there, and it turned out
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: to be beige, which is red shifted aqua. Anyway, Look,
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: the kind of thing that I was thinking of, Andrew,
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and it might go to the heart of Bob's question,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: is you remember last year there was a big fuss
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: when people thought that possphine had been detected in the
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: upper atmosphere of Venus, and phosphene is on Earth is
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: generally produced by biological processes, and so that I know
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: that the researchers who did that work, and I know
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: some of them. In fact, I talked to one of
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: them afterwards. He's a friend of mine in Hawaii. They
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: were very very careful to tease out the signal of
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: phosphine from the noise. This was done with quite big
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: radio telescopes. In fact, Alma was one of them. Has
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: to come a large millimeter array. And it was with
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: reluctance that they mentioned the fact that posphine's a live product.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Because the popular press jumped all over, Yeah, that's right
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: on venus, there's life on venus.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly what happened. And you know, maybe the bias
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: that Bob mentions is there because it's something that we're all,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: you know, we're all kind of trigger happy with. We
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: are urgently trying to seek any evidence of life anywhere
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: else in the universe.
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: Now, when you give some elements of the media an inch,
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: they take a mile.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: Well, that's true, and that certainly happened in that case.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: My recollection is that the original team still stand by
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: their discovery that it was posphine. But there was another
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: paper published. It must have been actually the year before
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: us when the posphine measurement was made, because I think
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: it was early last year that another paper was published
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: showing how how the phosphine signature could be mistaken that
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: it might actually think it was something like nitrous oxide.
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: I can't remember. It was something a lot less suggestive
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: of life processes. So I think honest mistakes are made.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: But yes, there might be a bias there too.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Generally, you'll probably find bias in circumstances where somebody's trying
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: to sell something. You might get those studies that are
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: released into certain products that improve your life, and the
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: study turned out to be ten people at a five
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: stars art for a weekend, answering a question.
• 19:39
  Speaker 5: And that kind of thing. So yeah, yeah, I think
• 19:42
  Speaker 5: that goes on.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: There is certainly less so in astronomy. Astronomy, I think
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: is partly what one thing you're looking for, and you
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: always check this whenever you make a discovery, is how
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: consistent it is with what we already know about the universe,
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Because often our discovery is they're highly forensic. It's all
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: done at distances ranging up to the thirteen billion light years.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Just turning to and I'm hypothesizing here as to what
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: the second part of Bob's question was because he got
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: cut off, as he said, but I think he might
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: have been wanting to ask me, what if I fast
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: forward one hundred years into the future and then look
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: back at twenty twenty two, what I would think of
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: as being discoveries that maybe were misleading, And perhaps the
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: one that comes to mind, and it's not through any
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: lack of honesty. This is the best evidence we have
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: so far is that dark matter exists and that it
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: is a subatomic particle of some kind that is pointed
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: to on through so many different experiments, and there's a
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: self consistency about it as well with what else we
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: know about the universe. But it could well be that
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: it turns out that it wasn't that. You know that
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: in the end, there is something that we don't understand
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: about physics. And what I'm thinking of his mond modified
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Newtunian dynamics. We've got a friend out there in the
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: audience a bit of a way and who's studying that
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: for his pH d and doing a great job. You know.
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: Just maybe the tide will turn and people will see
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: the evidence for modified Newtunian dynamics, which means that gravity
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: doesn't behave quite the way we thought it did on
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: large scales. That that might turn out to be the
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: answer that would be one I might venture to suggest
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: will be something that in one hundred years time we
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: might look back on and say, we all thought it
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: was dark matter. Yeah, how foolish were we?
• 21:43
  Speaker 5: Yeah?
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: Now, and then that's not probably not an uncommon scenario.
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: I mean we hindsight is twenty twenty in hindsight, until
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: you go forward and look back and go, ah, okay.
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: Right, that was it, that was why.
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: Yes, of course we get it right.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: A lot of tom too, I think we do. I
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: think that's really all right.
• 22:03
  Speaker 5: Bob Lovely, Hey from me, thanks for your questions or
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: space nuts.
• 22:13
  Speaker 6: Hello again, space nutters. This is Anna from Astronomy Daily,
• 22:16
  Speaker 6: the podcast, stopping by again with a couple of the
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: important stories we've been following over the past week. In
• 22:22
  Speaker 6: an intriguing start to twenty twenty five, residents of Mukukuo
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: Village and Kenya's Macqueney County were startled by a mysterious
• 22:29
  Speaker 6: arrival from above. A massive metal object weighing over one
• 22:32
  Speaker 6: thousand pounds plummeted from space and landed in their community,
• 22:36
  Speaker 6: creating a sound that could be heard up to thirty
• 22:39
  Speaker 6: miles away. The Kenya Space Agency quickly responded to the incident,
• 22:44
  Speaker 6: arriving at the scene on Tuesday morning. Working alongside local authorities,
• 22:48
  Speaker 6: they secured the area and retrieved what they later identified
• 22:52
  Speaker 6: as a separation ring from a rocket launch. This impressive
• 22:56
  Speaker 6: piece of space hardware measures approximately eight feet in diameter. Typically,
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: these separation rings are designed to either burn up during
• 23:04
  Speaker 6: re entry into Earth's atmosphere or land safely in unpopulated
• 23:07
  Speaker 6: areas like oceans. This particular landing, while unexpected, fortunately caused
• 23:12
  Speaker 6: no injuries or significant damage. The Space Agency has assured
• 23:16
  Speaker 6: the public there is no cause for concern and is
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: treating this as an isolated incident. They're handling the situation
• 23:22
  Speaker 6: under international space law protocols, with the object now in
• 23:25
  Speaker 6: their custody for further investigation. It's a remarkable reminder of
• 23:29
  Speaker 6: how space exploration occasionally makes surprising appearances in our everyday lives.
• 23:34
  Speaker 6: Scientists have made an exciting breakthrough in our ability to
• 23:37
  Speaker 6: detect gravitational waves, those subtle ripples and space time that
• 23:40
  Speaker 6: give us unique insights into cosmic events. Researchers have developed
• 23:45
  Speaker 6: a new technique called optical spring tracking that could dramatically
• 23:48
  Speaker 6: improve how clearly we can detect these elusive waves. The
• 23:52
  Speaker 6: Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory or ALIGO uses incredibly
• 23:58
  Speaker 6: sensitive equipment to measure tiny distortions in space time caused
• 24:01
  Speaker 6: by distant cosmic events. While this technology has already revolutionized
• 24:06
  Speaker 6: our understanding of phenomena like black hole mergers, it faces
• 24:09
  Speaker 6: limitations from what scientists call quantum noise. This new optical
• 24:13
  Speaker 6: spring tracking system works by tuning itself to match the
• 24:16
  Speaker 6: frequency of incoming gravitational waves. In tests, researchers used a
• 24:21
  Speaker 6: microscopic mirror weighing just fifty nanograms made from carefully layered aluminum,
• 24:26
  Speaker 6: gallium arsenide, and gallium arsenide. When hit with laser light,
• 24:30
  Speaker 6: this tiny mirror creates an optical spring effect that can
• 24:33
  Speaker 6: be precisely controlled to track and enhance gravitational wave signals.
• 24:37
  Speaker 6: The results have been remarkable. In their proof of concept experiment,
• 24:41
  Speaker 6: the team demonstrated that tracking a signal with this system
• 24:45
  Speaker 6: improved the signal to noise ratio by up to forty
• 24:48
  Speaker 6: times compared to traditional methods. This means we could potentially
• 24:52
  Speaker 6: detect much fainter gravitational waves from even more distant cosmic events.
• 24:57
  Speaker 6: While implementing this technology in full scale observatory like LIGO
• 25:01
  Speaker 6: will require overcoming some engineering challenges. The potential benefits are enormous.
• 25:07
  Speaker 6: By enhancing our ability to detect gravitational waves, we might
• 25:11
  Speaker 6: soon be able to observe events from the very earliest
• 25:14
  Speaker 6: moments of our universe, including the mergers of primordial black
• 25:18
  Speaker 6: holes formed shortly after the Big Bang. This advancement represents
• 25:23
  Speaker 6: a significant step forward in our quest to understand the
• 25:25
  Speaker 6: universe's most energetic events, and could help unlock mysteries about
• 25:29
  Speaker 6: how our cosmos formed and evolved over billions of years.
• 25:33
  Speaker 6: And that's it from me for this episode of Space Nuts.
• 25:36
  Speaker 6: I'm anna don't forget to visit Astronomy Daily dot io
• 25:39
  Speaker 6: for your daily fix of space and astronomy news updates.
• 25:42
  Speaker 6: We're constantly updating the site with the latest discoveries, mission updates,
• 25:46
  Speaker 6: and cosmic wonders until our next adventure through the cosmos.
• 25:50
  Speaker 6: Keep looking up and stay curious about the mysteries that
• 25:53
  Speaker 6: surround us in space.
• 25:54
  Speaker 7: Face nuts to this Spice Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
• 26:04
  Speaker 7: or your favorite podcast player.
• 26:06
  Speaker 5: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: This has been another quality podcast production from knights dot Com,