Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Galactic Mysteries: Fermi Bubbles, Saturn's Flash & High-Energy Life Forms

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Galactic Mysteries: Fermi Bubbles, Saturn's Flash & High-Energy Life Forms · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Heidi Campo: Welcome back to another episode of
0:02
Space Nuts.
0:03
Generic: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
0:06
10, 9. Ignition
0:09
sequence. Star space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
0:12
2. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4,
0:15
3, 2, 1. Space nuts.
0:17
Astronauts report it feels good.
0:20
Heidi Campo: I am your host, filling in for the beloved
0:23
Andrew Dunkley. And my name is Heidi Campo.
0:26
Joining us today is Professor Fred Watson,
0:28
astronomer at large. And you are at
0:31
large. You're still at your conference?
0:34
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, that's correct, yes. Um, still in. It's
0:36
actually turning out to be rainy Adelaide
0:38
today. There's, uh, quite heavy showers going
0:40
through, which I can see out of the window.
0:42
Um, and, um, hopefully, uh, I'll get a
0:45
dry spell to walk up to the university to
0:48
connect with my colleagues on the conference.
0:50
Uh, I do have an umbrella, so that's all
0:52
right. Being
0:55
British, you always carry an umbrella.
0:57
That's.
0:58
Heidi Campo: I was gonna say you're good at astronomy and
1:00
planetary science, bringing an umbrella.
1:03
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. I should show you my umbrella.
1:05
Actually, I can't do it now. But, um, it's
1:07
got all the northern constellations on it.
1:09
It's lovely. You flick it open and
1:12
suddenly there's the sky in front of you, uh,
1:15
all marked out, which came from
1:17
Jodrell bank in Northern England, which is
1:20
the home of the Lovell Radio telescope, which
1:22
was the biggest, uh, radio. It was telescope
1:25
in the world and it was built in 1957. So,
1:28
yeah.
1:28
Heidi Campo: Wow. Well, that's a fun, fun fact to start
1:31
off the episode.
1:32
And I guess speaking of radio, I will brag
1:35
for us. Before we started recording, Fred
1:38
had mentioned to me that a story that we just
1:41
covered on the last episode is hitting the
1:43
radio with, uh, quite a lot of
1:46
popularity. But you guys heard it here first.
1:49
And, um, if you missed our last episode,
1:52
you should go, uh, check that out. But just
1:55
talking about the Big Crunch, and, um,
1:58
we covered it thoroughly on the last episode,
2:00
and it's the hot news in astronomy now, so
2:03
you can go back and listen to that one. But
2:06
we do have a lot of great stories in the
2:09
queue for today as well that you're also
2:11
going to want to hear. And, you know, this is
2:13
funny because it's like, this is a science
2:16
podcast, but I feel like the articles today
2:18
are particularly Science Science rich.
2:21
There's a lot of, um, and.
2:24
And great variety too, Fred. These are going
2:26
to be some really fun articles.
2:27
So today, I don't even know I understand the
2:30
word bubbles and I understand Milky Way,
2:33
but I don't know what a Fermi bubble is
2:36
that we have discovered in the Milky Way. And
2:39
can you just tell Us Why they named it the
2:41
Milky Way?
2:42
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, um, you know, I.
2:44
Heidi Campo: There's a meme on the Internet where it's
2:46
like, who just looked up at that and thought,
2:48
mmm, milky.
2:50
Professor Fred Watson: The Greeks, I think, um, uh, um, and
2:53
the Romans. It goes back. It's probably, you
2:55
know, it's lost in time because it's got
2:58
this milky appearance. Via lacta, it's called
3:01
in Latin, uh, Milky Way. Uh, and,
3:04
um, uh. So ancient people looked
3:07
at it, thought it looked milky, called it the
3:09
Milky Way, telling it like it is. And
3:12
it's. And it's been known as that,
3:15
um, ever since. And I think it's
3:18
delightful that we still call it that. I
3:19
mean, we technically we see it as. It's the
3:22
edge, you know, the thickness of our galaxy
3:24
that we're looking through when we see the
3:26
Milky Way. It was Galileo who first saw that
3:29
it was made of stars and not congealed milk
3:31
or something like that. Uh, when he, when he
3:34
perfected the telescope or perfected his
3:36
telescope in 16, 1609, uh,
3:39
towards the end of 1609, early 1610, he
3:41
saw it was made of stars.
3:44
And that was, um, the first time anybody knew
3:47
really what it was made of. And that was, um,
3:49
you know, only, excuse me, 400
3:52
years or so ago. So it's quite a recent
3:55
discovery that it's actually, uh, made of
3:57
celestial objects rather than something,
4:00
um, almost supernatural, which I'm sure
4:03
was very much on the minds of people before
4:05
that. Supernatural milk from supernatural
4:08
cows, probably. Excuse me.
4:10
Heidi Campo: Yeah, I've always thought. I mean, it does. I
4:12
guess I don't look at it and think milky. I
4:14
think maybe Sparkle Way or something. But now
4:16
that, uh, you know, thinking of it through
4:18
the lens of ancient people, that makes sense.
4:22
Professor Fred Watson: A lot of, um, you know, what you might call
4:24
first nations cultures throughout the world
4:26
see it differently. Here in, uh, Australia,
4:29
a lot of the Aboriginal people. And
4:32
there are something like 400 different groups
4:35
of Aboriginal people within Australia. It's a
4:37
very. Because the. A big continent and these
4:39
are small nations dotted throughout. But
4:42
many of them saw it as a celestial river. Uh,
4:45
oh, that's beautiful. You know, so. And that.
4:46
And you can kind of get that because often
4:50
rivers in Australia, uh, uh, are milky and
4:52
the water's sometimes quite milky in
4:54
appearance. So it sort of all makes sense.
4:57
Heidi Campo: Hmm.
4:58
Well, I guess today we're starting off by,
5:00
uh, talking about milk bubbles.
5:03
Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's, you know, the froth on your
5:05
milk, um, which is very nice on a coffee or
5:08
something like that. Anyway, that's a
5:09
different story. So what are these things?
5:11
Fermi bubbles. You mentioned them. Um, they,
5:14
uh, and I'm not actually sure. I thought you
5:16
were going to ask me who named them and I
5:17
don't know the answer to that, so I'm very
5:19
glad you didn't. Um, the um,
5:22
Fermi bubbles are their structures
5:25
which are uh, thousands of light
5:28
years across, um,
5:30
and they, they, we see them in, in
5:33
radio telescopes. They're bubbles of hot
5:36
gas. And um, and we think they're
5:39
caused by sort of explosive activity
5:42
in the center of our galaxy because we
5:45
know that the center of our galaxy hosts uh,
5:48
a 4 million solar mass black hole,
5:51
um, which occasionally gobbles up material,
5:54
um, uh, you know, approaches it and
5:57
gets sucked into the accretion disk and
5:59
whizzes around at high speeds radiating X
6:01
rays and things of that sort and then get
6:03
sucked uh, into the black hole. What doesn't
6:06
get sucked in squirts upwards, uh, and
6:08
downwards, uh, at the poles of rotation of
6:11
the black hole, uh, to form jets. That's the
6:14
way black holes behave when they're active,
6:16
when they're gobbling stuff up. They form
6:17
these jets which come about because of
6:19
magnetic fields. So we think that the Fermi
6:21
bubbles are the result of uh, previous
6:24
outbursts in the galaxy's history. They've
6:27
only been known for 15 years. Heidi
6:31
20, uh, 10 I think. They were first
6:34
picked up by uh, gamma ray telescopes. So
6:36
gamma rays are very short wa wavelength
6:39
radiation at the opposite end of the spectrum
6:41
from radio waves, uh, but they are
6:43
symptomatic of high energy processes. So
6:46
things that are very hot, uh, or you know,
6:48
very active, like center of a
6:51
galaxy with an active black hole in it,
6:53
they're going to produce gamma rays as well.
6:55
Um, so, um, violent events.
6:58
They've been likened to volcanic eruptions
7:01
from the center of uh, our galaxy forming
7:03
these bubbles of material moving away
7:06
from uh, the galactic center. They're both
7:09
north and south of the center of the
7:12
galaxy. Um, but some new
7:15
observations using uh, the Green
7:18
bank telescope, uh, National Science
7:20
foundation over there in your country, uh, is
7:23
a team, uh, from um, I can't
7:26
remember which university. They're from North
7:28
Carolina State University and some other
7:31
institutions. What they've done is
7:34
they've used uh, the Green bank radio
7:36
telescope to get basically really
7:39
high, uh, fidelity, uh,
7:41
images and data on
7:45
the composition of the gases within
7:48
them, the speed that they're moving, things
7:50
of that sort. Uh, um, so
7:53
they've done what we would call a survey of
7:54
the Fermi bubbles. Ah, and that lets
7:57
them pick out fine details um, now
8:00
the thing about the Fermi bubbles, as I said,
8:02
they're very high energy. Their temperature,
8:04
uh, within them is roughly a
8:07
million degrees or so.
8:10
Uh, 1 million degrees Celsius or Kelvin.
8:13
Uh, it's a lot more in Fahrenheit, but it's
8:15
about a million degrees. But
8:18
there are clouds of gas within those
8:21
bubbles, um, which are
8:25
significant. You know, they're big clouds of
8:28
gas. They weigh um, thousands of times
8:31
the mass of the Sun. They're within the
8:33
bubbles, uh, roughly. The uh, ones they've
8:36
been identified are about 12,000 light years
8:38
from the center of the Milky Way.
8:40
And it's amazing thing, given that the
8:43
temperature of the Fermi bubbles is a million
8:45
degrees, these things are cold.
8:49
They're uh, uh, well, cold in comparison, let
8:52
me put it that way. They're only about 10,000
8:54
degrees. If you can describe 10,000
8:57
degrees as cold. Well it is compared with the
8:59
million degrees that's, you know, that's
9:01
surrounding them. And um, in fact there's a
9:04
lovely quote from uh, uh,
9:07
one of the um, uh, authors, the co author of
9:09
the paper is actually at the Space Telescope
9:11
Science Institute, STScI, which is in
9:13
Baltimore. Um, somebody uh, called Andrew
9:16
Fox. Uh, he um,
9:19
has this lovely quote. Uh, he says they're
9:21
around 10,000 degrees Kelvin, so cooler than
9:24
their surroundings by at least a factor of
9:26
100. Finding these clouds within the Fermi
9:29
bubble is like finding ice cubes in a
9:31
volcano. And you know, that's really
9:33
nice, a nice uh, summary. Um,
9:36
and it's hard to
9:39
understand m, why they're
9:42
there. And one of the other astronomers
9:45
involved with this says computer models of
9:46
cool gas interacting with hot outflowing
9:49
gas in extreme environments like the Fermi
9:51
bubbles show that cool clouds should be
9:54
rapidly destroyed, usually within a few
9:56
million years. Uh, a timescale that
9:58
aligns with independent estimates of the
10:01
Fermi bubbles age. Um, and
10:04
it wouldn't be possible for the clouds to be
10:07
present, to be present at all if
10:10
the bubbles were 10 million years or older.
10:12
So that's what they're saying is, you know,
10:14
you've got a scale of a few million years for
10:17
these things to evaporate to become at the
10:19
same temperature as the bubbles. But uh, uh,
10:22
they haven't done that yet. Um,
10:26
and one other quote if I may. Uh, because
10:28
this is full of great quotes and there's my
10:30
phone ringing and I don't know why,
10:33
uh, I'm going to ignore it.
10:36
They might be trying to get me out of the
10:37
room. Do you mind if I take this? Heidi,
10:40
let's Pause it. Let's pause it. We'll just.
10:43
Actually, they've gone. All right.
10:45
Heidi Campo: They'll be back. Don't worry.
10:48
Professor Fred Watson: They'll be back.
10:48
Heidi Campo: Probably.
10:49
Professor Fred Watson: They will be back. Yes, I'm sure that's
10:51
right. Uh, unless the place is
10:54
on fire or something like that. Doesn't look
10:55
to be. Um, so
10:58
another quote, uh, ah,
11:02
uh, uh, from one of the scientists involved
11:04
with this. What makes this discovery even
11:06
more remarkable is its synergy with
11:09
ultraviolet observations from the Hubble
11:11
Space Telescope. The clouds lie along a
11:13
sight line previously observed with the
11:16
Hubble Space Telescope, which detected
11:18
highly ionized multiphase gas.
11:21
Uh, that's just saying it's very excited. Uh,
11:24
ranging in temperatures from a million to
11:26
100,000 degrees, which is what you would
11:27
expect to see if cold gas is getting
11:30
evaporated. In other words, there is evidence
11:33
that these cold gas clouds are, uh, actually
11:36
dissipating, that they're warming up. Uh, and
11:39
basically, uh, they're going to disappear,
11:42
you know, within a million years or so. Uh,
11:45
so a really interesting story with a lot of
11:47
loose ends tied up very nicely by the
11:49
observations made by these scientists.
11:52
Heidi Campo: Wow, that's a.
11:55
I just. I'm still wrapping my head around
11:56
that metaphor of the ice cube in a lava
11:59
volcano or in a volcano. What an
12:02
incredible discovery. That's one I'm
12:04
definitely going to keep my eye on for
12:07
further, um, research and
12:10
seeing what we figure out. This is a really
12:12
interesting phenomenon.
12:16
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's pretty amazing.
12:19
Uh, and, um, uh, Fermi bubbles.
12:22
We've talked about them a little bit in the
12:23
past on Spacenuts, uh, when the, uh,
12:26
beloved Andrew Dunkley was there, uh, and
12:29
he'll be back, I'm sure. Uh, um, the,
12:33
uh, bottom line is though, that, um, they're
12:35
still a bit mysterious. You know,
12:38
clearly they are. They're sort of spherical
12:40
in shape. You can see when you look at, um,
12:42
images taken with, um,
12:45
principally radio telescopes, but also Gamma
12:47
Ray Telescope. Uh, it's that they're, they're
12:49
quite spherical. That a bubble is a good name
12:52
for it because they seem to be hollow. Uh,
12:54
but how they actually are,
12:58
how they arise, probably because the hot gas
13:01
shooting up from the black hole, uh, might
13:04
excavate a sort of spherical cavern in the
13:07
surrounding gas. It's still a bit mysterious
13:09
though.
13:13
Generic: Three, two, one.
13:15
Space nuts.
13:17
Heidi Campo: Yeah.
13:17
Speaking of mysteries, our next story
13:20
is also quite mysterious
13:23
and it seems like the race is on to figure
13:26
out what the answer is. And we are trying to
13:28
figure out. Did something just happen to
13:29
Saturn? Saturn? Did it just get Hit what is
13:32
going on? The headlines here is astronomers
13:35
are racing to find out. So it sounds like
13:38
this is also kind of a hot discovery that
13:40
everybody wants to know the answer to
13:43
is what's going on with Saturn?
13:46
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, yeah, so, um, Saturn, I
13:49
guess everybody's favorite planet, um, with
13:52
its rings, wonderful uh, place to
13:54
study and a great place to start with if
13:57
you've got a small telescope because you. The
13:59
rings are always quite breathtaking. Um,
14:03
so uh,
14:05
we know that um, planets, particularly in the
14:08
outer parts of. Well we know planets
14:10
everywhere are subject to bombardment by
14:12
asteroids at a relatively low rate. Um,
14:15
this is part of uh, the process of
14:18
planet building, uh most of which took place
14:20
four billion years ago, four and a half
14:22
billion years ago. But there are still
14:24
asteroids bombarding planets that, you know,
14:27
m missed the boat really. Uh, and we know
14:29
about asteroids that have hit the Earth in
14:31
particular the dinosaur killer back in
14:33
66 million years ago.
14:36
Um, so it's expected that you would see from
14:39
time to time small uh, asteroids, meteorites,
14:41
effectively hitting other planets. Uh, and
14:44
the most well known one for the outer planets
14:47
is a comet, uh, which uh,
14:50
impacted um, the planet Jupiter
14:53
back in, I think it was
14:55
1994 or
14:57
thereabouts. Um, uh, which
15:00
uh, basically, uh,
15:03
yes, it was 1994. I've just checked it up. A
15:06
uh, comet called Shoemaker Levy nine,
15:09
uh, which broke up actually because of
15:11
Jupiter's intense gravitational field. It
15:13
broke up before it hit the planet. Uh, but it
15:16
did hit the planet and because people had
15:19
observed the comet, uh, there were many
15:22
observations made including by our Anglo
15:24
Australian telescope here in Australia. Um,
15:27
they managed to observe the impact of
15:29
Shoemaker Levy nine fragments with the
15:31
atmosphere of Jupiter. Um, and so we'd expect
15:34
to see the same sort of thing with the other
15:36
gas giants out there.
15:38
And um, so with that as the
15:41
background, what's hit the headlines
15:43
uh at the moment is a
15:46
flash that has been recorded. It's actually
15:49
right on the limb of the planet Saturn,
15:52
uh, by an amateur astronomer who was
15:55
m taking video footage of the planet
15:58
itself. Um, now it's
16:01
an astronomer, uh, by the name of Mario
16:04
Rana, who is a NASA employee
16:08
and um, has. So as well
16:11
as working for NASA, he's also an amateur
16:13
astronomer. Uh, and he
16:16
basically um, caught this
16:19
image which you can find on the web. There's
16:22
a few websites that have got a picture of it.
16:24
It's a very blurry image of Saturn, which is
16:26
kind of what you'd expect from a short
16:28
exposure video image, uh, with a
16:31
flash at one side. Now the question
16:34
that everybody's asking, and this is what you
16:36
were alluding to right at the beginning is
16:39
uh, what is the flash? Is it something
16:41
impacting the atmosphere of Saturn or
16:44
is it perhaps a glitch in the data which are
16:47
uh, not unknown at all. Uh, when you're doing
16:50
astronomical imaging uh, with any kind of
16:52
equipment there are often, there's often the
16:54
possibility of a glitch. Uh so
16:57
um, that is a ah question
17:01
that can really only be resolved if
17:04
somebody else was also observing
17:07
plateau, not platurn Saturn.
17:10
If somebody else was also observing the
17:12
planet Saturn, sometimes abbreviated to
17:15
platen, um, uh, then um,
17:19
basically uh, and they found
17:22
the same flash in their data. Um
17:25
then that would prove that this was not a
17:27
glitch in the data, that it's actually ah,
17:30
um, something that's real, a real
17:33
event. Uh and so uh, the search
17:36
is on for somebody who was observing the
17:39
planet Saturn on the 5th of July
17:42
between 9am and 9:15am
17:45
UTC. That's Universal Coordinated universal
17:47
Time. That's the sort of standard time that
17:50
used to be called Greenwich Mean Time but is
17:52
now much more sophisticated uh 9:00am and
17:54
9:15 if any. Um, SpaceNots listeners
17:57
have got footage of Saturn taken at that
17:59
time, 5th of July, not very long ago between
18:02
9am and 9:15am M UTC. We want
18:05
to see your data uh, because there
18:08
could be evidence that this was a real event
18:11
rather than a hot pixel or some sort of
18:13
glitch in the data. So um, that's a story
18:16
that I think is going to develop again, one
18:18
we should keep an eye on Heidi, because
18:21
hopefully maybe within the next couple of
18:23
weeks we might find that somebody has
18:25
recorded the planet Saturn at that time,
18:28
uh, and that there is confirmation that it
18:31
was actually an impacting object. Then we've
18:33
got to think about what it might have been.
18:34
Possibly a comet, possibly an asteroid,
18:37
but something um, big enough to make
18:40
a significant um, flash when it
18:43
actually burned up or
18:46
interacted with the atmosphere of Saturn.
18:48
Heidi Campo: Yeah, yeah. This is just another reminder of
18:51
how important citizen science is because this
18:54
is a great example of you don't need to
18:57
be a Fred Watson to make these discoveries.
18:59
You could be, you know, any of our
19:02
regular listeners, you could be a Heidi Campo
19:04
and still do cool things and uh,
19:07
uh, that's really exciting. So I guess we
19:09
will find out. Uh, right now I guess it is
19:12
just a big hands in the air. I don't know.
19:15
We need more data to figure that out.
19:20
Voice Over Guy: Okay, we checked all four systems and. Team
19:22
with a go space nuts.
19:24
Heidi Campo: But unlike our last Story where there is
19:27
just so much conversation, lots of
19:30
talk, lots of mystery, lots of data, lots of
19:33
not data. We are talking about,
19:36
I think it's, we're going to be split down
19:38
the middle. It's either something you love to
19:40
talk about or it's oh man, this again. But we
19:43
are talking about the search for
19:45
extraterrestrials.
19:48
Professor Fred Watson: Yes.
19:48
Heidi Campo: And uh, for, I think for those of you who
19:51
are in the camp of you've watched the movie
19:54
Contact and you loved it, then this will be
19:56
the story for you.
19:58
Professor Fred Watson: It's a really interesting story. The reason I
20:00
put it in today Heidi, was that one of
20:03
my colleagues at the conference actually
20:06
mentioned this idea in his
20:09
talk, uh, for about a fifth of a
20:12
second. He didn't dwell on it. It was
20:14
flashed up on the screen. High, uh, energy
20:17
astrobiology was the term he used. And then
20:19
he moved on to something else. And I thought
20:22
those two words, oh, uh, three words I guess,
20:25
high energy with uh, a hyphen in between.
20:28
High energy and astrobiology.
20:31
Astrobiology is the uh, study
20:34
of the origin of life, how life evolved, how
20:36
it became, uh, where it is throughout the
20:39
universe. High uh, energy astronomy
20:42
is at the opposite end. It's the stuff we've
20:44
been talking about with the Fermi bubbles.
20:45
It's uh, things that are very hot or very
20:48
active or you know, full of radiation.
20:51
Uh, the kinds of things that you don't
20:52
associate with the origin of life.
20:55
Uh, that you might um, you know, think
20:58
that these high energy radiations would just
21:01
destroy any sort of molecules that
21:04
are trying to evolve into living
21:06
organisms. Uh, and uh, that's
21:09
why it seemed like um.
21:12
Yes, it seemed like the word is an oxymoron,
21:15
isn't it? An oxymoron's two things that go
21:17
together that mean opposite things. That's
21:20
what it seemed like. And then here I found
21:22
ah, an article which is on the phys.org
21:26
website, phys.org Ah,
21:28
reviving search for Extraterrestrial
21:31
Intelligence with High Energy Astronomy.
21:34
And so it's really um,
21:37
it's a white paper actually that's gone to
21:39
the NASA Decadal Astrobiology Research
21:42
and Exploration Strategy. Uh, and
21:45
they uh, have a request for information and
21:47
this white paper has uh, come in as a
21:49
submission. Um, and it's got at
21:52
uh, least two researchers involved with this.
21:55
Uh, they're involved with a project called
21:57
Breakthrough Listen, which we've certainly
21:59
talked about before on uh, Space Nuts.
22:02
Breakthrough Listen is a privately funded uh,
22:05
venture to devote some of the time
22:07
on two big radio telescopes, one of which is
22:10
here in Australia, the Parkes radiodish to
22:12
listening for uh, SETI signals. In
22:15
other words, the search for extraterrestrial
22:17
intelligence. Listening for signals that
22:20
might actually be
22:22
um, somebody's communication signals,
22:25
uh, in a different star system. Uh,
22:28
so these people are already tuned into that
22:31
idea. Now the breakthrough listen has been
22:33
going for some years, maybe 15,
22:35
10, 15 years. It's funded by a Russian
22:38
billionaire called Yuri Milner.
22:41
Uh, and they haven't found anything.
22:43
Basically, uh, no signals have been detected
22:46
that could be artificial in origin.
22:49
And I think, um, maybe in a little bit of
22:52
frustration around that, because
22:54
radio is what you think of at first as
22:58
extraterrestrial civilizations trying to
23:00
communicate with one another. It's what we
23:02
use in our civilization and uh, it leaks out
23:05
into space. We know that the Earth is quite
23:07
bright in the radio spectrum because of all
23:10
our radio signals as we communicate with each
23:13
other. Uh, so perhaps frustrated at
23:15
the lack of any response on that, these
23:18
scientists have posed the
23:21
idea how could high energy astronomy be used
23:24
to find radio signals from
23:26
technological civilizations?
23:29
And so it dwells on things
23:32
like objects that emit M, cosmic rays,
23:34
gamma rays, X rays,
23:37
uh, all these things which are uh, come
23:40
from sources of high energy emissions. Uh,
23:43
they list a whole lot of them. Neutrinos, X
23:45
rays, cosmic rays, gamma rays, pulsar
23:48
wind, nebulae, neutron stars, black holes,
23:51
solar flares and gamma ray bursts. Um,
23:53
but how do you uh, associate that with
23:57
uh, technological civilizations? Well, what
23:59
you've got to do is think completely out of
24:02
the box. Uh, and one of the boxes
24:05
that they think out of is, you know,
24:08
we uh, regard our environment here
24:11
on Earth at a comfortable temperature of
24:13
about 15 degrees Celsius on average for the
24:15
whole planet, uh, as being where
24:19
life has evolved, where we have evolved. But
24:21
they are thinking way outside and they're
24:23
saying, okay, uh, think of the surface of a
24:26
neutron star. Now uh, I meant to look up what
24:29
the average temperature of the surface of a
24:30
neutron star is and I forgot to, but it is
24:33
very, very hot. It's, you know, we're talking
24:35
thousands of degrees. Um, and
24:38
imagine uh, that ah,
24:43
a life form could exist on such a
24:46
surface that lives on nuclear energy
24:49
and all that radiation that comes from the
24:51
neutron stars. So how do
24:54
you search the signals we get from neutron
24:57
stars to look for artificial signals? And
24:59
they're suggesting AI for that machine
25:02
learning, uh, searching X ray images,
25:05
neutrino bursts, gamma ray observations.
25:08
Um, there is a quote, if I may, uh,
25:11
read it from the study that says high energy
25:13
seti, by and large Must be a
25:16
commensal effort for the foreseeable future.
25:18
That's one that everybody joins in. Dedicated
25:21
programs will only be feasible after much
25:23
further investigation. At, uh, this stage,
25:25
our efforts will be like those of early radio
25:27
and optical SETI pioneers who developed
25:29
methods and infrastructure that took
25:32
decades to grow into the robust subfield
25:35
it is today. So, yeah,
25:38
it's really interesting. I like the other
25:41
comment as well. An even more basic reason
25:42
for these studies is the difficulty in
25:44
building optics for some kinds of radiation
25:47
because we cannot make neutrino lenses. Every
25:49
neutrino detector is sensitive to large
25:52
areas of sky, making it a good
25:55
SETI facility if you're looking at the whole
25:57
sky. But what you find might not mean very
26:00
much to us. So I'm not quite sure where this
26:02
study is going. Um, I have to admit
26:05
a little bit of skepticism as to whether we
26:08
would ever find a technosignature from the,
26:11
uh, X rays coming from a neutron star.
26:13
Um, it would be very mysterious. So the first
26:16
thing I would think of would be, uh, well,
26:18
maybe there's a planet going around it that's
26:19
got a rather more benign environment to it.
26:21
But, you know, we're always looking for
26:23
planets in the Goldilocks zone, that zone
26:25
where it's not too hot and not too cold for
26:27
liquid water to exist, because that's the
26:29
only form of. Of life we know, one that's
26:31
based on liquid water. But, yes, there may be
26:33
other forms of life. Who knows?
26:35
Heidi Campo: We. I, I certainly don't. No, some
26:38
of our listeners do. Maybe. Maybe, uh,
26:41
Henrique will be the one to find them.
26:43
Professor Fred Watson: Ah, yes.
26:43
Heidi Campo: This, uh, this really does kind of sound like
26:45
the plot line to contact
26:48
some billionaire funding some young ambitious
26:51
scientist. And I've always laughed because
26:53
it's like, that's every scientist dream. If
26:55
someone shows up with a blank check, and it's
26:56
like, all right, how much money do you need?
26:58
I will fund everything. And you're just like,
27:00
thank you so much.
27:01
Professor Fred Watson: Thank you. Yeah, I don't know, what do you
27:03
say, but thank you.
27:05
Heidi Campo: That'd be pretty cool. Um, my friend, um,
27:08
Dr. Allison McGraw, she's a planetary
27:10
scientist at the Lunar and Planetary
27:12
Institute. She looks through
27:15
telescopes, and she's sure her background's
27:17
in, um, geology. And she's always thought
27:19
that for extraterrestrial life, that we
27:21
should look for planets with
27:24
plastic signatures.
27:26
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Yep.
27:27
Heidi Campo: And that's always been. Her philosophy, is
27:29
just looking for those kinds of materials
27:31
or things that are not going to be
27:34
organically made. I mean, she's like, we need
27:36
planets that have garbage on them. Yeah,
27:39
that's going to tell us there's life there.
27:42
Professor Fred Watson: Exactly. And it's uh, another way that
27:44
uh, people are already looking uh, for is,
27:47
you know, gases in the atmospheres of
27:50
exoplanets that can only be formed by
27:52
industrial processes, which might be easier
27:54
to find than plastic signatures. Some of the
27:56
gases like fluorocarbons, things of that
27:59
sort that only come out of
28:01
smokestacks, uh, in industrial, you know,
28:04
industrial machinery.
28:06
Heidi Campo: Um, uh, so we found that and it was
28:08
KB18B.
28:11
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. K2.18B. That's right.
28:13
Heidi Campo: K2.18B.
28:16
Professor Fred Watson: Those are um, the signatures that
28:19
are reputed to have been found, they still
28:21
haven't been confirmed, are ah, chemicals
28:23
that are only emitted by microbes on Earth.
28:25
So they're not technosignatures, but they are
28:27
bio, uh, signatures, what we might call
28:29
biomarkers, if they are real.
28:32
Heidi Campo: And that is an episode from a few weeks ago
28:34
that we go in depth on if you were interested
28:37
in ah, that particular planet.
28:41
Professor Fred Watson: That's the one, um, which your husband likes,
28:43
I believe.
28:44
Heidi Campo: Yeah. Uh, I think he saw that on Instagram
28:47
and he was fascinated because it was one of
28:49
those clickbait type articles that has some
28:52
headline. It's like, we found aliens. NASA
28:55
confirms that we have found aliens. It's
28:56
like, okay, we're alive.
29:00
And then you read the study and you find out
29:03
that they're just finding um, gas bubbles
29:06
that might be something. That might be
29:07
something. And it's, they're just looking at
29:09
it through a few pixels on one telescope. So
29:11
it's like, okay, we're not quite there yet. I
29:14
think when we, if, if, if or when we do
29:17
find something, it'll be more than one
29:19
article from one random Instagram page.
29:23
Professor Fred Watson: I think you're right there, everybody talking
29:25
about it.
29:26
Heidi Campo: Well, Fred, this has been a really fun, uh,
29:29
conversation and I know that you're eager to
29:32
get back to the rest of your conference where
29:34
you can learn more and share more with us. So
29:37
we're going to let you uh, get going. But
29:39
thank you so much for joining me today.
29:42
This has been really fun, talking about milky
29:45
coffee bubbles and uh,
29:48
Saturn and ETs and all the fun stuff.
29:51
Professor Fred Watson: A high energy episode of, uh, um,
29:54
Space Nuts. That's what we call it, don't we?
29:56
Space Nuts. That's it.
29:59
Yeah. No, it's great. Thank you, thank you
30:01
very much, Heidi. Thanks as always for your
30:03
time and enthusiasm and we'll talk again
30:06
soon.
30:06
Andrew Dunkley: Hi Fred. Hello, Heidi. Hello, Huw in the
30:09
studio.
30:09
Andrew again from somewhere in
30:12
the Mediterranean and where We've spent, uh,
30:15
a fair bit of time since I last spoke to you
30:17
after our visit to Tenerife. What have we
30:19
been doing since? Blimey. Uh, we've been
30:22
everywhere. Uh, mainly in Spain, but also
30:25
Morocco. We docked
30:28
at Casablanca and then took a,
30:31
A trip for a few hours to Marrakech. Now, we
30:34
didn't catch the Marrakech Express,
30:37
um, which is made famous by the Crosby,
30:40
Stills Nash and Young song, but, uh, we did
30:42
see it, actually. Uh, no, we went to
30:45
Marrakech and, uh, we. We sat down to a
30:48
traditional Moroccan lunch and, and looked at
30:50
the countryside. Uh, it's a strange,
30:53
strange change of terrain when
30:56
you're driving from Casablanca to
30:59
Marrakech, when you're heading south because
31:01
it turns into desert very rapidly. But
31:04
beautiful country. Quite, uh, quite
31:07
different to what I expected. Uh, then we
31:10
sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar and
31:12
saw the Rock. We were supposed to stop there,
31:14
but delays have, uh, forced us to
31:17
skip the, uh, UK territory.
31:20
And then it was on to,
31:23
uh, Valencia. And we did a
31:26
cooking class, believe it or not, uh, and
31:28
learned how to make paella or. Paella
31:31
or whatever is the local pronunciation. And
31:34
we got to eat it later. Fantastic.
31:37
And then we moved even further to
31:41
Barcelona. And, uh, we. We
31:44
discovered, um, things about Barcelona we
31:47
didn't know. Like the hidden city that was,
31:50
uh, dug up fairly recently, they
31:53
didn't know was there, but it was, uh, a
31:55
city underneath the city of Barcelona.
31:58
Uh, so, uh, they've renovated that and uh,
32:01
excavated it. I mean. And, uh, you know, you
32:03
can see the streets and the. And the shops.
32:05
They think it was a market called Elborn.
32:09
Uh, worth looking up if you want to check it
32:10
out. And we saw the cathedral there. I mean,
32:13
you go to a European city, there's a
32:15
cathedral, and of course, the famous Columbus
32:18
statue where he's pointing out to sea.
32:21
Uh, then we moved on again and dropped
32:24
in yesterday to Majorca and did a
32:27
bit of a cross country trip to see the caves
32:30
of Drac. And they are, uh,
32:32
spectacular. We even got treated to a
32:35
wonderful little classical concert, uh, with
32:38
people in boats on a lake in, in the
32:41
depths of these caves. And there
32:44
was an, uh, an organ, two violinists,
32:47
a cello and a rower in one boat
32:50
who did the concert for us was fantastic.
32:52
Uh, and then we, um, looked around
32:55
at, uh, many other places. One of the
32:57
interesting things about Mallorca is in the
33:00
farming district that we, we drove across.
33:03
Uh, it used to have a problem with, um,
33:06
groundwater. It was the. The ground was
33:08
completely soaked and they wanted to use it
33:11
and they couldn't figure out how to get the
33:13
water out, so they contacted it. A Dutch
33:16
engineer who came over and said, oh, I've got
33:18
the solution for you, and put up about
33:21
2,000 of these
33:23
windmills and dried the whole thing out by
33:26
draining off the water through windmills.
33:27
Well, the windmills are still there, but they
33:29
don't use them anymore. Uh, they use electric
33:32
pumps instead. And
33:34
then, uh, we moved on today
33:37
to Cartagena, the one in
33:40
Spain, not the one in Colombia, although we.
33:42
We've now been to both. And we, uh, did
33:45
a little bit of a walking tour around
33:47
Cartagena, Saw the Roman ruins, the,
33:50
uh, Roman streets that they dug up, uh,
33:53
recently, and some of the other architecture.
33:56
But mainly we were there to try the food, the
33:58
tapas and the amazing,
34:01
uh, sangria and that incredible
34:04
coffee that they produce with, um, Liquor
34:07
43 and, oh, gosh, it's
34:10
so nice. Probably terrible for my heart, but,
34:13
um, we'll get over it, I'm sure. So that's
34:15
where we're up to. Our next stop takes us
34:17
back to Morocco, where we'll be getting off
34:20
in Tangier, and then we'll be doing a coach
34:23
trip to the Blue City. So I'll, uh,
34:26
report on that and more. By the time I talk
34:27
to you next, we'll have made several more
34:29
stops, but, uh, it's really exciting. We're
34:31
having a great time. Hope all is well in
34:34
Houston and Sydney and everywhere else,
34:37
uh, where Space Nuts people live. Talk
34:40
to you soon. Bye for now.
34:43
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34:45
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