Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Exoplanet Collisions, Cosmic Snowball Fights & Australia's Astronomical Future

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Exoplanet Collisions, Cosmic Snowball Fights & Australia's Astronomical Future · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, Thank you again for joining us. This is
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science. My
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: name is Andrew Dunkley and we have got a lot
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: to talk about. As always, this is a really interesting story.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: It has start us off. Two exoplanets have collided. Apparently
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: it happened on the corner of George Street and Martin
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Place in Sydney and they weren't insured. We've got more
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: interesting data from Dart see what I did there, and
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: a paper looking at Australia's telescopic science future with a
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: strategic partnership about to end. What does it all mean?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: We will tell you on this episode of Space Nuts
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: fifteen Secuidance in Channel ten nine Ignition Squench, Space Nuts
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: SI or three two Space Nuts as can I reported
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Neil's goods and he's back again to throw furniture at
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: us snow to furnish us with his non it's Professor
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Fred Watson, astronomer at Larst.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Hello Fred, you're on fire today, Andrew, I don't know
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: what to sol it. Maybe not on fire. It's turned
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: in me. It's cost me my voice having a coughing fit.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Excuse me, Yes, I am going to furnish you with
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: any gems of information that I can drag up from
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: wherever they happen to be lurking. Very good.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it, Otherwise they would be very boring show. Yes, yeah,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: how are things everything good down in your neck of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: the woods.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, not doing too badly. The job that I do,
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: which is a sort of vague job as a professor
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: of astronomy, is getting busier and busier. A lot going on,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and we'll talk about some of that actually in this
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: week's episode. But yes, all good, so far, excellent as
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: far as it goes.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: Actually, I can tell you I might I might have
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: mentioned this to you last week. Over the weekend, I
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: was down in camera because I was narrating some music
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: about the sky given by a classical ensemble called the
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: Griffin Ensemble, who I've worked with before. They they are
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: a sort of eight piece altogether classical music ensemble. They're
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: very popular in Canberra and they do a work which
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: was written by an Estonian composer who's now no longer
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: with us, Aumas Cizask, both the leader of the ensemble
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and I have met that guy a long time ago.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: But he wrote a big piece called Southern sky about
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: the Southern Hemisphere constellations, and they were playing excerpt from
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that in the two concerts that we gave on Sunday,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: and my job is to say a little bit about
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: not the constellations, but sort of what the mean, what
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: what astronomy is, what's going on in astronomy, to add
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: a little bit of perhaps a little bit of structure
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to the program. And both there were two sellout concerts.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: We had full house each time and it all seemed.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: To go very well, fantastic. That's different, isn't it.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's very It's very close to my heart
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: because classical music has always been my thing and it's
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: really nice to be able to participate in it at
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: that kind of level.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Wow, these are top, top class musicians.
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: And you and you say they're very popular in Canbra. Yeah, yep,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: that's that's difficult to do, to be popular in can.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I know we did take when when we started
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: doing this. The very first time we did it, it
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: was in the ruins of one of the telescope domes
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: at Mount Stromlow after the burned down a few yeah
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: years earlier, and it was really what an atmosphere it
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: was just in this circular building which was a dome
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: once with the peers of the telescope. The telescope had gone,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: it was burnt, but then concrete remained and quite quite spectacular.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: And that was the first time we did it. We've
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: probably done it twenty times since it was featured on
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: ABC Classics a few years ago as well, so that
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: it can kind of pause, probably find it somewhere it's done.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, what a venue too. And you just had to
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: tear away all the police tape so you could get in.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: So yeah, that one.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, dear Red Rocky, shall we get to it.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get to it. Sorry to Oh no, no,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: it's really interesting.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Actually, in our next episode we're going to hear from
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: somebody else who does something completely different because we asked
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: the question about you tell us more about your job
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: and they did, so we'll look forward to that.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: That'll be fun, really interesting as well.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: But first let's.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Talk about this fascinating discovery which didn't happen near us. Thankfully,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: two exo planets have been witnessed colliding. It wasn't a
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: car crash, but probably a little bit worse in this
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: game of things.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Pretty spectacular, I would imagine if you were, you know,
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: at a ringside seat for that on an orbit side seat. Yeah,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: this is work that's come from the University of Washington
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: in the US. It is a piece of research concentrating
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: on a star which is eleven thousand light years away.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: It's not nearby. This is you know, this is kind
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: of well, it's well in the depths of the galaxy
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: compared with where we are, and it's a I might
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: tell you the name of the star, because we should
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: always give our stars names. It's called Gaya twenty e
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: HK and it's a bog standard main sequence as we
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: call them star a lot like the Sun and is
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: like the Sun, constant in its light output. So this
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: thing's been monitored since twenty sixteen, Big Baker pund since
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: before twenty sixteen. The Gaya spacecraft is what's called an
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: astrometric spacecraft. It measures the positions of objects in space
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: very accurately, but it also measures their brightness. And it's
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: been going now for oh gosh, now when it went
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: into orbit, I should check that. But anyway, Gaya twenty
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: e HK was one of the stars that was monitored
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: by it, and then in twenty sixteen, things started happening,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: and what basically happened was something that we expect when
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: we have a planet in orbit around another star. You
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: get a dip in brightness. That's how you know. We've
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: talked about this many many times on Space notts. It's
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: how you often how you discover that stars have planets
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: going around them. Because the planet passes in front of
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the star, it drops the brightness of the star very slightly,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: and you can measure that, and if it does it
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: again months or weeks or days sometimes later, then you
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: can identify it as being due to a planet going round.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: This start, and so we happened to be looking along
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: the plane of the orbit of the planet. That's the trick,
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: that's the statistical bit. But it turns out you can
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: you know, there's still a lot that you can discover
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: doing that. Anyway, twenty sixteen, it had three dips in
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: brightness over a matter of years. But then in twenty
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: twenty one, and I love the description by the lead
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: researcher on this work, it went completely bonkers. A quote says,
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I can't emphasize enough that stars like our son don't
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: do that. So when we saw this one, we were like, hello,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: what's going on here? And by bunkers, he meant that
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: there were many, many dips. It's just sort of it
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: wasn't It wasn't a steady, slowed dip and then coming
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: back to brightness, it was almost like a flickering of
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: the light of the star. And what they assumed from that,
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: the research team was that this is probably the result
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: of a lot of rock and dust passing in front
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: of the star as it goes around in orbits. Meanwhile,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: that the sort of steady dips have disappeared, and all
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: you've got is this almost flickering. And so this is
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: being interpreted as is that two planets which caused the
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: original dips in orbit around Guy of twenty AHK collided
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: and we have caught that, you know, by these observations
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: with the Gaya spacecraft. So those planets are no more.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: But what we've got is a cloud of large chunks,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: probably of debris, which is causing the flickering. And the
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: bit of this that I really like is that they
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: didn't just say, oh, well that's the end of that.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: We know that that's what's happened. What they did was
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: they also observed this star in infrared radiation. They used
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: a different telescope to observe it with infrared. And let
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: me quote again from the lead author, the infrared light curve,
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: which is the way the light varies over time. The
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: infrared light curve was the complete opposite of the visible lights.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: As the visible light began to flicker and dim, the
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: infrared light spiked, which could mean that the material blocking
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: the star is hot, so hot that it's glowing in
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: the infrared. And that's the kind of the smoking gum.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: Because if you're looking at the debris of a collision,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: this is a very violent event, what you would expect
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: it is for that debris to be hot, and it
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: is hot in the infrared. Sorry, it's visible in the infrared,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: revealing that it is actually hot. So what the way
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: they're interpreting this. And another quote from the lead author
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: and the let me try and pronounce his name or
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: pronounce their name. I should say it's Sandid Darkest, Danny Darkist.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: I hope that's all right. Yeah. The quote is that
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: could be caused by the two planets spiraling closer and
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: closer to each other. At first, they had a series
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: of grazing impacts which wouldn't produce a lot of infrared energy.
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Then they had their big catastrophic collision, and the infrared
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: really ramped up. And so the link that these researchers
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: are drawing with our own Solar system, I think in
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: many ways quite profound, because what we might be seeing
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: there is a similar event to the in which the
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: Moon was created. Again, something we've talked about a lot,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: the fact that perhaps four point five billion years ago,
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: very early in the history of the Solar System, an
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: object about the size of Mars, which we call Tea,
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: collided with the young Earth and lifted clouds of debris
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: which eventually call us to form the moon. So that is,
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: you know, if we've seen something like that actually happening,
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: as we seem to have done with this particular star,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: maybe there is an exo moon on the way being
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: formed as we speak as a result of these collisions.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: Because eleven thousand years have passed since the event, yes,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that's right, we're only seeing it now, but yeah, it's
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: already eleven thousand years since that happened. Still can't get
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: made around that stuff, but it's yeah, so who knows
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: what's going on there. It could create a muron. It
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: could create a much bigger planet. It could just become
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: an asteroid belt. You just don't know, do you.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: That's right, that all of those are possibilities. Unfortunately, it
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: would probably take, as they say, I'll take a few
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: million years for all this to settle down to let
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: us see kind of you know what, what actually has happened.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: So in a few million years time, Geya will probably
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: be defunct by then, but we might be observing it
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: by differentmes.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: And I looked it up that was launched in twenty
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: thirteen and got down to both less than twenty fourteen.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: So yeah, so that's a couple of years of observing
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: this star when it did nothing, and then suddenly when
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: you started seeing these depths, yes, went weird, very strong.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: Another interesting coincidence about Guya twenty e HK is that
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: apparently that collision happened ninety three million miles from the star,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: which is pretty much the same distance we are from
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: our star one.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Hundred and fifty million kilometers. That's correct. Yeah, that's right,
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: which I thought was an interesting fact as well, just
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: as a coincidence. But what I guess what that means
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: is because it is a sun like star and you've
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: got this going on one hundred and fifty million kilometers
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: away from it, the same distance as we are from
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: the Sun. It might what's happening there might almost mimic
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: what has happened here in our solar system. That, yes,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: you might end up with an Earth like planet and
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: a moon.
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: It's in a few million yes time, Well, we'll get
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: back to that then, I suppose.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: Yes, we'll, well, we'll we'll return to that story. Then
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: there may be more news. I mean, it's clearly this
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: is a big story in the astronomy world. It's such
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: a rare event to see something like that. I think
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: there will be more studies and we might have more
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: information coming out of it. Not in a million years,
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: but maybe within the next few months.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: You never know, all right. If you'd like to read
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: about it, it's on the space dot com website, but
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you'd also read the entire paper, which will take you
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: a couple of billion years at it's in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: Let's take a break from the show to tell you
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  Speaker 1: That's nord vpn dot com slash space nutsoutely we've had
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  Speaker 1: a couple of cardiac reff down here too, be space nuts. Now,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: it was only a week ago, maybe two where we
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: talked about some interesting data that came out of the
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: Dart mission that impact on a little moon orbiting an asteroid.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And it's the gift that keeps on giving Fred this
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: particular mission because there is even more information that's come out.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: And this is really strange, this one. I would not
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: have considered this, but there it is in black and white.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Purple and white as some seeing it as well, could
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: be purple and white, purple and white, yes, which is
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: the color coding of the image. That is the story
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: that we're talking about. So yes, Dart the double asteroid
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: redirection test, very successful collision of a little impact to
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: six hundred kilograms. I think you've corrected me on last
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: time we've spoke about it, and that actually shifted the
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: orbit of dimorphous a little moon one hundred and seventy
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: meters cross around its parent asteroid Didimos, which I think
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: is about seven hundred meters across, and it changed its
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: orbit by thirteen minutes the orbital period. So a successful,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: really successful mission. We spoke last week about the fact
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: that not only had that changed the impact, not only
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: had the impact changed the orbit of Dimorphous around Didimos,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: it had also changed the orbit of both of them
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: around the Sun. My entiny tiny amount, but enough to
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: be significant, and enough to mean that maybe there is
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: hope that one day down the track, if we really
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: were faced with a prospect of an asteroid impacting the Earth,
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: they might be there might be things we could do.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: But the latest comes from some research university of I
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: think it's Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland. And
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: what they've done is they've looked very closely at the
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: images of Morphous, the little Moon, which of course was
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: captured by the onboard camera on Dark getting bigger very
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: rapidly as Dark hurtle towards it at what was it
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: six kilometers per second for the impact, and the last
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: few images of that, of course are very very detailed.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: And so what these scientists have done is they've said,
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: we wonder if and I should explain what Dark what
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: dinni musk looks like. It's what's called a rubber pile.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: It just looks like a pile of dirt with boulders
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: all over it. Some of them quite big, with no
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: real structure to it, just a potato shaped object with
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: lots of boulders on and clearly dirt and debris at
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: very small scales. So what they wondered was whether there
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: was any structure that would be visible sort of underlying
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: structure in the shape of that moon. Some really neat
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: image processing, they've taken away the shadows of boulders and
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: taken away the images of boulders, they've done a sort
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: of search algorithm for the things that kind of would
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: hide any any underlying structure, And sure enough, when they
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: did that, they revealed a whole set of streaks on
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: the surface, quite you know, marked streaks, many many meters long,
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: all of which seem to basically originate from one point
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: on the on the on this moon's surface, which, as
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I understand it is the point that corresponds to the
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: direction to the parent asteroid Didimos, because it's tidally locked
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: andrew the dimorphous always keeps the same face towards Didimos.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Is the normal situation where something like that now, and
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: what they're interpreting this as being about is mirror material
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: being transferred from Didimos to dimorphous and sort of landing
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: with a splat on the surface of dimorphous and causing
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: these streaks to basically emanate from the point of impact.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: What they are saying is that it's a cosmic snowball
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: fight cytech Daily's words, and so it is very, very intriguing,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: and they've done experiments to show that, yes, if you
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: splat cosmic snowballs on a surface, you get these streaks.
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: But the.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: Mechanism for this is something that they've hypothesized, but it
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: probably is the mechanism for what's happening, and it relies
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: on the Yorp effect, which I have heard of before,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: but I can never remember what it stands for. And
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the reason for that is that it's for names Yokovski, O'Keefe,
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: Red Savisky, and Paddock, y RP the initials of those
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: who are going to try and attempt it again. But
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: YopE effect is where if you've got an asteroid small asteroid,
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: sunlight that's falling on it, the sun's radiation actually increases
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: its rotation rate, it sort of spins it up, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: as that happens, if you've got loose material near the equator,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: it can actually be flung off. That was one of
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: the early hypotheses for how the Moon was formed, That
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: the Earth when it was born was rotating so quickly
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: the centrifugal force lifted stuff off its equator, which eventually
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: callest to form the moon.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: That theory was due to the Sun of the inventor
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: of evolution. And I can't remember the son's name, never mind.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: It's so it's a couple of famous famous people. Charles
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Darwin's son, I've forgotten his name. Charles Darwin's son was
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: an astrophysicist or in astronomer, and he suggested that was
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: the way the Moon had originated. And we now know
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: it's not that the Earth never rotated fast enough to
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: do that, but Dinnimos might have rotated fast enough to
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: release material from its equator and splat it towards the
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: little moon that it has in orbit around it. So yeah,
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: so remarkable, really remarkable piece of work.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. As for Charles Darwin's son, well, you've got
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: a few to choose from this, William George Francis, Leonard Horace,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: and Charles Jr. So take your pick. Yeah, Because Scott
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Revee and his wife had ten kids.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: It might have been Well, there you go see evolution
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: for you. I think it might have been William. It's
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: probably very easy to find because the younger Darwin, which
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: other one it was, was quite prominent in the world
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: of astronomy.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah he was. He was first born in eighteen thirty nine.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: William e Arismus Darwin eldest h Yeah, although he was
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: a banker.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: Well that might mean we're going on.
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: It'll be George, because he was a prominent mathematician and astronomer.
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: That's it, okay, George, George Howard Darwin.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Very good. Yeah, we got there in the end.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: We did. We did eventually. Yeah. Now I did have
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: a bit of trouble with you breaking up, so I
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: missed a couple of bits and pieces. Oh sorry, No,
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: that's okay, But these things happen. It's the Internet, after all,
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: it's perfect. Did we finish.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: No, Well, just going to say make one more comment.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: There's a there's a spacecraft call Hero which is going
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: to visit the di Demos system. So we should see
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: more evidence of this kind of thing. There'll be better
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: images down the track than what we've been working with
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: so far. So I think this is again is a
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: story that we'll revisit at some point down the track.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Very good. I must say. The image that they've published
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: on sietech Daily dot com with that color impression makes
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: it look like a passion fruit.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: It does. Yes, Yes, there you go.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: I've got all in spiel links. You've got to create
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: mind pictures with the sort of things. So there you are,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Yes you do, which is very Yes, it's a bit
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: bigger than the standard passion fruit, but yeah, probably not
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: quite as nice. Yeah, you can also read that article
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: in the Planetary Science Journal. You're listening to Space Nuts
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson Barlow.
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: I'm promund what space Nuts.
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: Our final story and this this sort of is a
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: pretty serious story in terms of the future of telescopic
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: science in Australia, and it's all about an arrangement or
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: an agreement. I'm trying to think of the word a
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: strategic partnership maybe between the europe and Southern Observatory and
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the University of New South Wales or Australian telescope telescopic infrastructure.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: But that's due to our and there's a risk that
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: we might sort of be left high.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: And dry seems to be the eighth of this story.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: That's correct. Yeah, so what's prompted this? This is something
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: that I've been deeply involved with the three years although
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: so you're absolutely right. In twenty seventeen in it again
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: it was the federal government that underwrote this. Australia. The
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: Australian government entered into a strategic partnership with the European
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Southern Observatory, which gave Australian astronomers access to first of all,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: the four eight point two meter telescopes of the VLT,
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: the very Large telescope down in Chile, and a number
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: of other ESO telescopes as well were included in that deal.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: One that wasn't was Alma, the Attakama Large milimeter array,
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: in which ESO has a share, but the others were
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: and it's been absolutely transformative for Australian astronomy because the
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: telescope we had available as of right before that was
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: the Angle Australian Telescope, a three point nine meter telescope
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: still doing great work, but it's only half the size
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: of the world's largest now and it's on a fairly
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: in different site. They've lost the last two nights because
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: of cloud that's very typical, whereas that just doesn't happen
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: in the Ata Kama Desert. They lose virtually no time
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: to cloud. So you've got exquisite image quality because of
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: the lack of atmospheric turbulence. So that for many years
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: has been the holy grail of Australian astronomers wanting association
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: with ESO, Australian astronomers every ten years put out a
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: decadal plan. A new one has just been released last year.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: It's but for the last three I think membership of
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: the European Southern Observatory has been top of the list,
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: and in fact we got it back in nineteen ninety six,
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: but that didn't quite work out. The Strategic partnership was
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: a special deal and it was sort of almost like
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: a try before you buy arrangement with the hope back
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: in twenty seventeen excuse me that by the end of
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: the strategic partnership Australia would be in a position to
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: enter into full membership of the European Southern Observatory rather
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: than just this partnership. So that was the bright hope.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: Excuse me, ten years have gone by. Sorry, I've got
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: froggy my throat about this. Ten years have gone by
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: which have been very successful for Australian astronomers. But we're
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: now reaching the end of that deal. It ends next year.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: In fact, at the end of next year, and in
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: fact this July is the last deadline for which Australian
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: astronomers can apply for time. So it's really you know
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: that the pointy end of this is coming up. Excuse me.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: European selln Observatory, sorry about that, is very keen for
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: Australia to become full members. It's sort of looking as
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: though Canada might be as well. They might be accessing
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: to full membership. Not sure about that. But Australia, of course,
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: all Australian astronomers are keen. The Australian sorry, the European
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: Southern Observatory is keen. What's the problem. The problem is
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: it's quite expensive. It's an expensive venture. And your so
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: your annual subscription to ESO IS it depends on your
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: gross domestic product, and ours is high enough that it
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: means that our fee for membership of ESO IS is
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: relatively high. It's forty million dollars a year. That would
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: be what it would cost for us to join ESO. Now,
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: the problem at the moment is we're in an era
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: of fiscal well limitations. The government's federal government in particular,
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: are trying to reduce costs and you know when you
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: put it against a hospital or something like that, forty
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: million dollars a year is quite significant amount. But what
• 30:25
  Speaker 2: the press release that's just been released by the University
• 30:29
  Speaker 2: of New South Wales, which is why you picked that
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: up at the beginning, it's drawing attention to an economic
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: study by a very well respected economist in Australia, Professor
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: Richard Holden, who's also at the University of New South Wales.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: Hence the press release from UNSW. He has shown that
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: far from it being a luxury item for governments to
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: fund astronomy and to include things like membership of the
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: European Southern Observatory, far from it being a luxury item,
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: it actually generates considerable revenue. And the just what we
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: do now this covers about because astronomy stimulates research into
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: high end instrumentation. Optical instrumentation that's developed here in Australia
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: is at the top of the list on a world scale.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: The instruments for astronomy and space science, and that effectively
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: stimulates industry to join in with this and puts new
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: inventions out there. And so this quite rigorous analysis of
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: the benefits of being in astronomy by Professor Richard Holden
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: has shown and this is his paper that's just been published.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: It shows well, let me read, there is a strong
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: case for membership in the ESO as an investment in
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: basic research. While there will be numerous attempts to quantify
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: the economic returns to Australian university research, this report concludes
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: by taking a novel approach based on endogenous growth theory,
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: this produces more rigorous and plausible estimates of the economic
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: value of existing astronomy and astrophysics research in Australia. See
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Jordie agrees with all this and the bottom line is
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: what comes out of research in Australia three hundred and
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: thirty million dollars per year. So what he says is
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: at three hundred and thirty million dollars per year, this
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: is an exceptional return on the one hundred and eighty
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: four tenured and six hundred and twenty seven total scholars
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: in the field of astronomy in Australia. So a small
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: group of people are generating a huge economic return because
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: of the research that they do. And if you're putting
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty million dollars per year out than
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: a forty million dollar fee to be part of E
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: so it seems like a small quite a small fee.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: What that does, though, is gives Australian astronomers access to
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: the very finest facilities in the world. We can build
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: instruments for them, we can do research with them, and
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: as I said, all these spin offs generate that kind
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: of figure. And one last point in this if I may, Andrew,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry of go rambled on a bit as I do. Australia,
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: of course, thank you. Australia, of course is one of
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: the main contributors to the Square Kilometer Array Observatory. So
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Australia's radio astronomers are going to benefit enormously by access
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: when that facility comes on stream towards the end of
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: the decade. Part of it in South Africa, part of
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: it in Australia. The SKA Low facility, the biggest and
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: best radio telescope anywhere in the world, the two halves
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: of it. Because Australian astronomers have access to that. It's
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: always been seen that the SKA square KULIMETERRA would be
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: entirely complementary to the next big thing that ESO is building,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: and they're well under way with it, and that of
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: course is the ELT, the extremely large telescope with a
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: mirror ten times the diameter of the angle Australian telescope
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: thirty nine meters. When that starts producing data, twenty twenty nine,
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: I think is currently the date it will revolutionize astronomy.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: It will absolutely revolutionize astronomy. And with our astronomers here
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: having access also to the world's best radio telescope, those
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: two facilities dubtail perfectly to give you absolutely pole position
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: on the world stage of astronomy. So it makes that
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: forty million dollars a year look a lot more modest.
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: The bottom line is the decision that has not yet
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: been made, that's the main thing. So the minister's still
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: considering this.
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: But you're talking politics here, so the left hand might
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: not know what the right hand's doing. So you know,
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: someone will say forty million, no way, not knowing that
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: three hundred and thirty million is being generated.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, Dane, which is that's why I'm talking
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: about this paper, because that is a very compelling argument
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: for you know, for actually the government stumping up the
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: joining fee. Maybe it will happen. We we defer to
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: the minister, the Minister for Science and Industry and Resources.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: We'll see what he has to say.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Indeed we will. If you'd like to read about that,
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: you can find it at the University of New South
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Wales website where they've published the article. And that's about it. Fred, Well,
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: I think we're done.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: We are, yes, and maybe we'll end on an optimistic
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: note that maybe one day you and I'll be talking
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: about the ceremony that allows Australia to join the So who.
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: Knows, be wonderful, Yes, indeed would Fred, thanks so much.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: We'll catch you on the next episode.
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: It sounds good. Thank you, Andrew.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer app large and don't forget to
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: visit our website in between episodes. You can do that
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: at space Nuts podcast dot com or space nuts dot io.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Have a look around, visit the shop. Maybe you'd like
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: to become a supporter. You can do that by clicking
• 36:31
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• 36:34
  Speaker 1: us a message or a question through the Ask Me
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: Anything tab at the top. Just have a look around
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: even And yeah, that's about it. And thanks to Hu
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: in the studio, although he couldn't be with us today.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: He went and rated his piggy bank to see if
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: he could scrape up forty million dollars so that we
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: could become full members of the European Southern Observatory. But
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard back from him on that. I think
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: he ended up at JB hi Fi actually. Anyway, from
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll catch you
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye.
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot Com.