Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #451: Unexplained Starliner Noises, Ganymede's Cataclysm & Black Hole Jet Discoveries

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#451: Unexplained Starliner Noises, Ganymede's Cataclysm & Black Hole Jet Discoveries · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us again.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: This is Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My name is Andrew Dunkley. Coming up on this episode,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: we will.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Be looking at more more to the point listening in
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: on the Boeing star Liner. The reports are that strange
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: noises are coming from inside and nobody's in there, so
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: what could it be. We'll also be taking a look
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: at the history of gamming meed. It apparently took a
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: hit by an asteroid that was bigger than the one
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: that killed off the dinosaurs on Earth. We will be
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: revisiting the story about black hole jets.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: They think they've figured something out and believing in aliens.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Do you believe in aliens?
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Well, if you do, you might want to listen in
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: on this story because some are saying this is becoming
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: a problem.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: This is all coming up on the next edition right
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: now of Space Nuts.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: Fifteen second gads in channel ten nine ignition.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Sequence Space Nuts or three.
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: Two more on Space Nurse as when I reported Bills good.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: And he's back again for more. It is Professor Fred.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: What's that astronomer at large? Hello Fred, Andrew, I'm here
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: for more, but I'll give less.
• 1:22
  Speaker 5: Just you know a big contrary.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, less is more though fred as we know, Yes,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: indeed heard that saying a few times over the years,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: and it's not true in golf, so let's just appoint
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: the more unless you're playing a Stableford Stableford, a Stableford
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: which was named after a man named Stableford, believe it
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: or not exact, And what is it? It's where you
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: get points rather than you get points for you score,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: so you always score. I get two points for a par,
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: three for a birdie, four for an eagle, five for
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: an albatross, which no one ever gets, or you only
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: get one point for a bogie and nothing for anything
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: worse than that. But there are variations of it, but
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: that's the one we play until less is less, Yes,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: less is less, yes, exactly right. Or if you hit
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: it less you get more, so it can go that
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: way too.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: It's a weird game. It is a strange game, golf'sip
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: game of opposites.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: You hit down to get the ball up, you hit
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: left to go right, you swing right to go left.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: It's no wonder. No one can play the damn game.
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: And when you get to the end, and you should
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: feel glum, you feel happy.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that doesn't happen. It generally feels one.
• 2:42
  Speaker 5: Yeah, that's one of the can.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: We can we talk about the Boeing star Line because
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: it's in the news at the moment. I know, we're
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: sort of recording it a little bit ahead of time,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: so the story may well have changed by the time
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: this comes out. But the Boeing star Liner, as you know,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: is kind of stranded and the astronauts are stuck on
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the International Space Station. From what I've heard until about February,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: they're trying to figure out how to bring the star
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Liner back. There's been talk of sending it back empty.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: In the meantime, Fred, there's been some weird noises coming
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: from inside you. You obviously heard about this too, because
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: we both thought we should talk about it.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: I have got a recording that was provided by NASA,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: which is a conversation between mission control and astronaut Butch
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Wilmore and I'll let it sort of pan itself out
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: before we discuss what the probable noise is.
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: It's a strange noise coming through the speaker, and I
• 3:46
  Speaker 6: didn't know if you could connect into the Starliner and
• 3:48
  Speaker 6: let me here. I don't know what's making it, but
• 3:52
  Speaker 6: I don't know for something that's maybe connected between here
• 3:55
  Speaker 6: and there making that happen. But anyway, can you did
• 3:58
  Speaker 6: it and we can con hear that.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Butch, give us a minute and i'll call you back.
• 4:01
  Speaker 6: Whens ready, that's all right.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: But that one came through.
• 4:10
  Speaker 6: It was kind of like a pulsing noise, almost like
• 4:12
  Speaker 6: a ming. Now one more time in large, what's going on?
• 4:18
  Speaker 6: Here we go?
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So that was astronaut Butch Will Moore on the
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: International Space Station conveying his concerns or at least asking
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: NASA to investigate this odd noise coming from inside, uh,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: the star liner, and they've been trying to figure out
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: what it is. Now I know the answer now, But
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: when I first heard it, I hadn't read the story,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: and my immediate thought was audio feedback. That's exactly what
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: I thought it was, and that's what they believe.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: It might be a feedback loop.
• 5:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: Well, if you listen to audio all the time, you'd
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: probably been in many studios where there's feedback that you
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: don't we and it sounds like that.
• 5:16
  Speaker 5: It does.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: In fact, when I worked for the ABC, if you
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: didn't push the magic button before you went on air,
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: the satellite.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Fed back through all.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: The transmitters, so everybody who was listening would have got
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: that sound almost exactly like that. So, yes, you've got
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: to call very quickly from Master Control in Sydney if
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: you didn't push the orange button. It was the green
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: orange button too, because it was actually marked orange because
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: that's where the line went from Dubbo to a city
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: called Orange just down the road, and so they had
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: orange written on the button, but the button was green,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: so we affectionately called it the green orange button.
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well that's exactly the description and it's the green
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: but yeah, feedback.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: It turns out it was probably feedback in the audio systems.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So easily solved. But it must have sounded weird to them,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: this noise that probably did worry for a minute. Who
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: has got into that?
• 6:15
  Speaker 5: You know?
• 6:15
  Speaker 4: Is this somebody from outside our vicinity on planet Earth
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: or what sounds?
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: It certainly sounds like someone trying to get in?
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: Yes she does. Yeah.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Anyway, problem solved. Well, you know, mystery solved. I don't
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: know if they've solved the problem.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: They certainly haven't solved the problem of the star Liners issues,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: but they're working on it.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: It will, we believe by the time this goes to
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: Are I suspect it will be back on Earth? Yeah,
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: because the serious talk of when it when it will
• 6:47
  Speaker 4: come back?
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: So okay, Fred, let's move on, Annymeade, this is an
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: interesting world.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: Uh.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: Well, it suffered a similar incident to that of Earth
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: so many million years ago, when Earth was struck by
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: an asteroid that basically obliterated most of the life on
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: the planet, including the end of the end for the dinosaurs.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: I think they were already in trouble, but this asteroid
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: finished the job. Well, now they've been looking at the
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: history of Ganymede, Jupiter's largest moon, and it looks like
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: it took a similar hit some time ago. In fact,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: that asteroid was much much bigger.
• 7:36
  Speaker 4: Yes, it would have to be, because the modeling that
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: has been done by a group based if I remember
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: rightly in Japan, that modeling shows that the whatever it
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: was that hit Jupiter's moon gun Imede, was enough to
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: tilt it to change its axis. And that's big stuff.
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: That's big time stuff. You don't you know, you can
• 8:07
  Speaker 4: clout it with something small and it might destroy a
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: biosphere or muck it around like the like the chick
• 8:13
  Speaker 4: selub asteroid did that wiped out the dinosaurs, But to
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: change the way an object ro takes that is really
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: something hefty. And the thinking is that the asteroid that
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: hit Ganymede was probably twenty times the mass of the
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: asteroid that hit our planet and got rid of those
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: naughty dinosaurs back in the day.
• 8:41
  Speaker 5: So and the.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: Study comes is practiced scientists at Cobber University and elsewhere.
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: What they've done is looked at surface features on Ganymede,
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  Speaker 4: and in particular there are what are usually called furrows.
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: They're probably is when you you know, when you get
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: down to the scale of what they look like, we
• 9:04
  Speaker 4: call them furrows and their concentric circles they're in They're
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: not just you know, things that stripes across the across
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: the disc of Ganymede. They are centric concentric circles. And
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: the diameters measured in thousands of kilometers. Remember Ganymede is
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: bigger than the planet Mercury's Yea, with diameters well of
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: the five thousand kilometers. So the what what these startists
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: have done is looked at these circles and in particular
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: looked at kind of where the center is the center
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: of what's called the furrow system. I suppose you think
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: of furrowed brows and things like that, but that's what
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: they are. And it turns out that that center is
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: exactly opposite where Jupiter is in the sky of Ganymede,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: because like most moons next to a big planet, Ganymede
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: is tidally locked in its dance around the planet Jupiter.
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: It's tidally locked, so it always faces the same side
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: to Jupiter.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: This is.
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: Telling you that the center of the Ferro system is
• 10:15
  Speaker 4: directly opposite where Jupiter is in the sky. This has
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: led these scientists to do modeling as to how that
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: could have occurred, and sure enough, something big has hit it.
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: Only a large impact could have moved the rotational axis
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: of Ganymede in the way that we think it has happened.
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: So yeah, really quite significant discovery, some really very nice
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: planetary geology.
• 10:41
  Speaker 5: If I can call it that, that's.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Gone into this study and.
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: Very much an outcome that we think might change our
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: understanding of Ganymede.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: And we're talking about an asteroid that was three hundred
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: killer made as in diameter something like that, which is
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: about one hundred what about one hundred and eighty miles
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: in diameter.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, would be about Yeah, that's a big rock. It
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: is a big rock.
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: Yes, we would not had that hit the Earth, we
• 11:15
  Speaker 4: would have probably had a global extinction of everything because
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: the effect on the planet's atmosphere and biosphere would have
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: been devastating.
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: And would and you'd have to say that would be irrecoverable.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Life would not have developed at all.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: It may have done, It may, but it might have
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: had to start again, you know, Yeah, from whatever processes
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: started life three point eight or thereabouts million years ago,
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: billion years ago.
• 11:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you might be going back.
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: To square one, which it sort of may have happened anyway,
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: you know, in the in the earliest history of the
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: of the planet, because it went through various phases. We
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: talked not very long ago about snowball Earth, which actually
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: wasn't that long ago, seven hundred million years ago, but
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: in its early history it probably had all kinds of
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: weird and wonderful phases that it went through.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: And how long ago did this happen again? Anyway, four
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: billion years.
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: Ago something like that, that's correct, And that's the time
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: when the you know, the Solar system was pretty wild
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: and wooly.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: There was still a lot of.
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: Debris from leftover from the formation of the planets, like
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: large asteroids, which was swilling around the Solar System. It
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: may even have been that, you know, Ganymede was only
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: just tethered to the planet Jupiter at that time. It
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: probably may even have been itself a very hot world
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: because four billion years ago, you know, the Solar systems
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: only four point six or four point seven billion years old,
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: so you're talking about very early time in the history
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: of our Solar System, and things would have been very
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: different from what they are now.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what would have happened to the asteroid? Would it
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: be absorbed into Ganymade or because it made a crater,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: like a massive crater of sixteen hundred kiliopmeters or something
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: in diameter.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: That's right, So you're absolutely right.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: We think that Ganymede is an ice world, that it
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: has a very thick layer of ice, probably you know,
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty kilometer thick, much thicker than what
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: we think Enceladus has. But of course gannymade is much
• 13:30
  Speaker 4: much larger, larger than Enceladus or Europa, and underneath that
• 13:36
  Speaker 4: layer of ice there is an ocean. We think we
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: have very good reason for believing that, and that is
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: probably where the debris lies. It's probably been absorbed into
• 13:50
  Speaker 4: the ice crust of Ganymede.
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: So if we got close enough as it rotates, we
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: could hear a rattling, scraping sound that the.
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: Asteroid churning around underneath the Iceler. I suspect it probably
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: got obliterated, but there should be rocky debris from it,
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: you would think, which might well be something that the
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: first time we send a lander to Gunnymede that sort
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: of lands among the furrows, which might be quite hazardous actually,
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: But once you do that, you might very well be
• 14:25
  Speaker 4: able to look for evidence of the you know, the
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: devastation of this asteroid, the bits and pieces that are
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: left over from that that cataclysmic.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: I know people are saying, ask the question. Andrew asked
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: the question, So I'll ask the question, how do we
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: know this happened? How is it just because we're looking
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: at the surface, going oh right, what apeny?
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Or is it something else in play?
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: No, you're right, absolutely right, because I've skirted over that.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: So the the concentric circles what to tell you that
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: there was an impact event.
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: That's you know, the basically the debris kind of quasi
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: quasi crater. Uh.
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: But it's the it's the the position of this in
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: relation to the direction to Jupiter that suggests that the
• 15:25
  Speaker 3: that the rotation axis of Jupiter has changed.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: And that's.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: Probably because of the the way the planet rotates about Jupiter.
• 15:42
  Speaker 5: You you you.
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: Expect, Yes, it's because there's a misalignment of the rotation
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: axis with Jupiter. Even though it's tidally locked, you've got
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: this misalignment. Sorry, I'm finding trying to find the right
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: word to describe it. So the direction to Jupiter is
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: different from what you'd expect given the rotation axis that
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: Ganymi chose. So when you think about it, you know,
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: the way our moon rotates, it goes around once per lunation,
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: once every time it revolves around the planet, and its
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: rotation axis is almost perpendicular to its orbits.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: But Ganymie doesn't. That's the that's the bottom line, okay, Right,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: if you'd ask an Australian scientist what it was, they
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: would have said, it's out of whack.
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: Well, they might also say, well everything's gone.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Bunk, everything's gone bang, it's out of whack. Yeah, that's
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: what it was, all right.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: So yeah, fascinating history and one big collision. Wouldn't you
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: have loved or have been able to film that and
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: put it on Instagram? This, Yes, and you can find
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: that story on Cosmos magazine website. This is Space Nuts
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Nero Pace Nuts. It's going to take some medicine, Fred,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: this medicine here.
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: Hang on, let me look, let me see thee oh oh,
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: that's interesting looking medicine.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yes it is. It's called molot No, could be
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: something similar. All right, let's move on and we'll talk.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: We talk now about black hole jets.
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: Now.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: We've done a story about them, only very recently, but
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: it's back in the news. There's more to be told
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: about these black hole jets. And this is something we
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: get questions about so very often.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Fred.
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: We do because it's kind of counterintuitive. You've got a
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: black hole from which you know nothing can escape because
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: it's a black hole, and yet it has around it
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: a swirling disc of material which itself is propelling jets
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: of plasma to the north and south of the black hole.
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: In other words, perpendicular to this disc of material, and
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: we glibally say that's due to the magnetic field of
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: the black hole.
• 18:21
  Speaker 5: Rotating.
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: Black holes do have my magnetic fields, but the details
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: of that I think have been well largely theoretical until
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: now when scientists at the PPPL, which is the Princeton
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: Plasma Physics Laboratory in New Jersey, they've actually done it.
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: They've created a black hole, not quite but created the
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: plasma that would come from the material surrounding a black hole,
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: so it's a high energy density plasma. They did it
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: by shooting a very very powerful pulse laser at a
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: plastic target, so that creates the plasma, and they you know,
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: they've created basically nuclear fusion in a little fuel capsule
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: and got from that protons and X rays, all the
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: stuff that they think would be in this disc of
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: material rotating around a black hole. But what happens is
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: the way the X rays and the streams of protons
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: interfere with the high energy density plasma, or the way
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: they interact with it involves very very strong magnetic fields,
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: which do the sort of thing that magnetic fields do
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: on the Sun. They break and recombine. And what they've
• 19:48
  Speaker 4: done is essentially seen how you can create a straight,
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: narrow line of plasma.
• 19:59
  Speaker 5: I'm going to read some some.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: Comments by one of the researchers, Will Fox at pppl
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: our experiment was unique because we could directly see the
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: magnetic field changing over time. We could directly observe how
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: the field gets pushed out and responds to the plasma
• 20:18
  Speaker 4: in a type of tug of war. Another comment from
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: one of the other researchers. When we did the experiment
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: and analyze the data, we discovered we had something big observing.
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: Magneto Raleigh tailor instabilities arising from the interaction of plasma
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: and magnetic field had long been thought to occur, but
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: I'd never been directly observed until now. This observation helps
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: to confirm that this instability occurs when expanding plasma beats
• 20:48
  Speaker 4: magnetic fields. So the gobbledegoog word there is magneto Raleigh
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: tailor instability. It's described very nicely buy space dot com
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: as a bubbling and frothing of the plasma. It slushes
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: against the magnetic field lines bubbles and froths and gives you.
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: This instability creates shapes in the magnetic field that looks
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: like that look like whirls and mushrooms. But this is
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: the tricky bit here, Andrew. As that energy decreases, then
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: like they do on the Sun, the magnetic field lines
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: could snap back rather than creating this froth of magnetism.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: And when they do.
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: That, you get a compression of the plasma into this
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: jet of material, just like we see coming from black
• 21:44
  Speaker 4: holes in the centers of galaxies. So an experiment that
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: basically duplicates what happens in the plasma surrounding a black hole.
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: Remarkable stuff, and you need a high energy physics laboratory
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: to do it. It's not the sort of thing you
• 21:57
  Speaker 4: can do in your backyard.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And we've finally found a good reason to have plastic
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: which is even better to up it with a twenty
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: duel laser.
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: That's right, Yeah, yes, we.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: Need to do a lot of that.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: So, as I understand it, this has basically opened the
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: door to improve our understanding of what's happening in space
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: in terms of these kinds of events, because it's always
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: been very mysterious. But they've created it in a lab,
• 22:28
  Speaker 2: which is extraordinary on its own, but now it opens
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: the door to wider study and understanding.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Is that fairly accurate.
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's right. So what they've done, I mean, you know,
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: the best modeling that we've got with all the supercomputers
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: doing calculations, theoretical calculations of what you expect to find
• 22:47
  Speaker 4: in the region around a black hole. You can model
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: it till the're blue and till you're blue in the face.
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: But if you can demonstrate it experimentally, and there aren't
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: many circumstances in astronomy where we can do that because
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: you can't, for example, build planets and watch how they
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: distort the space around them.
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: They're not too.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: Big, not really, no, but you can. What you can
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: do with some some interactions that involve high energies, and
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: this is clearly one of those, is to build clever experiments.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: There was some quite nuanced ways in which this experiment
• 23:23
  Speaker 4: was carried out. If you can do that and show
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: that what you get at the end of it is
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: what you expected to get from the theory, then you
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: can be much more confident in applying the theory to
• 23:33
  Speaker 4: a real situation where you've got a black hole in
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: the central legalaxy. So it's very valuable stuff, and in fact,
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: you can probably learn more from it because the reality
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: of doing this with your streaming relativistic plasma that might
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: teach you other things that your theory wasn't really wasn't
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: sufficiently finely tuned to show so very valuable experimentation and a.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: Great real Yes.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Indeed, if you'd like to read up on that, as
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Fred said, it's at space dot com, or you can
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: read the paper in the Journal Physical Review Research.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: This is Space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here, Fred Watson.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: There, Murder your love through your Space nuts.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: And we've got one more story, Fred, and this one
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: is going to get people really kind.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Of well maybe divided.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: There are people in the world that believe that aliens
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: have visited Earth, and there are those that say poppycock.
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: And now they've been looking into these sorts and claims
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: and beliefs, and it's starting to become a problem.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Why so, uh, Because yes, because the what it does
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: is it breeds conspiracy theories.
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: Because on the.
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: One hand, you've got you know, the Pentagon and others
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: saying nothing to see here, and they're being far more
• 25:02
  Speaker 4: explicit in the way they're saying that now because we're
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: seeing pictures of what they have seen. But you know,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: the scene unidentified anomalous phenomena, but no evidence in any
• 25:13
  Speaker 4: of that that these are due to extraterrestrial visitations. So
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: you've got, on the one hand, Pentagon saying that nothing
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: to see here, and there are large numbers of people saying, well,
• 25:25
  Speaker 4: we don't believe the Pentagon because they're always keeping secrets,
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: so they must be there. And so there was a
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: poll done in twenty nineteen. This is just one of
• 25:35
  Speaker 4: the statistics that I think is really interesting about this story.
• 25:40
  Speaker 4: A poll done in twenty nineteen, a Gallup poll found
• 25:44
  Speaker 4: that sixty eight percent of Americans believe that the US
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: government knows more about uphos.
• 25:50
  Speaker 5: Than it is telling.
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: And you know, that's one reason I think why there's
• 25:58
  Speaker 4: been much more openness about the Pentagon files, about.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: This sort of thing than that has been in the past.
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: We've talked about this before that there was a congressional
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: hearing not very long ago about these, you know, these documents.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: It's it's really, you know, it's it's really that the
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: idea of conspiracy that is probably the most dangerous thing,
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: because the more people you've got believe in conspiracies, the
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: fewer people you've got who are you know, taking a
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: more a more, how can I say measured line about
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: things that we don't understand that the bottom line is
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: and you know, I can say this is a well
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: semi working as to a physicist. Don't do much research
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: these days, but I'm still very connected with the with
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: the field. There is zero evidence, zero evidence of any
• 26:54
  Speaker 4: visitation by by aliens to our planet. There is nothing
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: you can present that conclusively proves that. And yet we've
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: got this huge number that thinks that something's going on
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: at Roswell for example, the goal yes from us, all
• 27:13
  Speaker 4: of that in the mix.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: There is proof that aliens have not visited Earth. And
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: that's it's called the Drake equation.
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: Well, yes, that's right. The Fermi paradox as well. You know,
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: the Fermi paradox says where are they all? Because we
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: should be seeing them, but they're not here.
• 27:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm just looking at some of the statistics.
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Twenty four percent of Americans, so they've seen a UFO.
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it's similar in other countries. Well, you can't
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: absolutely say that people have not seen UFO. So it
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: doesn't mean they're alien spacecraft. It could just be a
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: jetplane that nobody identified, or the Sun's hitting at a
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: strange angle, so it looks like a blob instead of
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: a metal fuselage. There's all sorts of most of them
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: can be explained away.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: That's right. Most most of them are the planet Venus.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: In fact, yes, yes, absolutely, Lots of people post questions
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: on social media.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: What was that big light in the sky last night?
• 28:14
  Speaker 5: Yeah it was Venus?
• 28:16
  Speaker 7: Yeah exactly. I think they're sorry, go ahead, Andrew just
• 28:21
  Speaker 7: thinking this is not going to go away, because once
• 28:24
  Speaker 7: people get to be in their bonnet, they don't want
• 28:26
  Speaker 7: to let it go.
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: That's correct. And there's there's even a concern that, you know,
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: there might be an invasion of the roswell side a
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: bit like there was on the Capital on sixth January.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: That's something that has authorities worried. I think that that
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: could happen. It's also this article, and it's actually it's
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: basically an article from The Conversation. It's written by Tony Milligan,
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: who is a research fellow in the philosophy of ethics
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: at King's College in London. That there is one of
• 29:12
  Speaker 4: the other elements in this article, which is a really
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: interesting one, is the way that in popular ideas, popular
• 29:21
  Speaker 4: conspiracies a lot of First Nations people are being incorporated
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: into those ideas that you've got First Nations communities who
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: know a lot more about uphos and things of that
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: sort than we do. There's a sort of mix in here,
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: and I think that side of it is one that's
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: concerning as well, because First Nations people across the world,
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: including here in Australia and Canada in the United States,
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: have got creation stories which are fabulous and wonderful to
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: listen to, and wonderful to align with our understanding of
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: what's going on in the sky and how it works.
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: From a side, I think this really started taking off
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: after World War Two, but in particular in the sixties
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: and then into the seventies, and there was a really
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: well made, whether or not it was full of shite
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: or you know, based on some truths documentary called Chariots
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: of the Gods, and I think it busted the whole
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: thing open, to be honest.
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: The Chariots of the Gods was about the Naskal Lines
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: and the Naska figures, and yes it's complete fiction, you know,
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: certainly in the case of the Naskal Lines, you can
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: there's still.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: The pegs that those.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: Early Peruvians used to draw them, and bits of string
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: that they used to make the alignments. They're still there.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: You can arbodate them because they're organic material. That was
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: back in the sixties. You're quite right. It certainly gave
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: us a lot of interest in that. In that thinking,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: I visited the NASCAR lines and talked to people who
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: are archaeologists in that country specializing in them. There's a
• 31:11
  Speaker 4: good reason why those lines were drawn and why those
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: figures were drawn, gigantic figures in the desert, and that's
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: because they believed that the Shamans, the holy men, and
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: the nearly all were men were able to fly above
• 31:24
  Speaker 4: them and see these things on the grounds. That's basically
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: the bottom line why it was. And some of them
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: also mark out what you might call processional tracks. There
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: are things that you could walk along. So there's a
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: hummingbird that is a beautiful thing on the desert floor
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: which has an entry and an exit, so people could
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: walk along in their whatever their rituals were that they
• 31:48
  Speaker 4: were doing, they followed the path of the hummingbird and
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: came out, so that there's a lot of study being
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: done on those lines. But yeah, the characters of the
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: gods kicked it all off for sure.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that that hummingbird.
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: I think people who do that walk they come out
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: just below the back of the wings, behind the legs.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: That's where the exit is, right, I think there is
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: an exit there.
• 32:12
  Speaker 5: Yes, I believe that.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I'm sure there is. I'm sure there is.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, when you've got presidents and high
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: profile politicians talking about releasing information about what the Pentagon
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: knows and what the US government knows about these kinds
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: of things, it just stirs the pot, doesn't it.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: It just goes on and on and on.
• 32:32
  Speaker 5: Yes, that's right.
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: So the more open you can be, the less likely
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: you are to get conspiracy theories. But there might be,
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: you know, there still might happen whether you're open or not.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: Simple, I think we're way too far down the track
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: for this to people. Doesn't it brought under control to
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: be perfectly honest. Yeah, But it's a fascinating story, a
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: really good read. You can find that at now where
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: was it?
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: Fears dot or It is indeed on fizz dot org,
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: but it's also on the Conversation that's where.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Conversations got a great article on it as well.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: Check them out.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: That brings us to the end. Don't forget to visit
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: us online if you are so desire and check us out.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: You can send questions through the AMA link, or you
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: can read the Astronomy Daily news feed and sign up
• 33:22
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• 33:25
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• 33:30
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• 33:44
  Speaker 1: Or subscribe, depending on which platform it is. Fred, we're
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: all done. Thank you very much, sir.
• 33:51
  Speaker 4: It's a pleasure, always, very good to talk about all
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: the stuff that we talk about. Yes, yes, I'm sure
• 33:57
  Speaker 4: some of these stories will spawn questions doubt about that,
• 34:01
  Speaker 4: which we'll answer in later episodes. Thanks Fred, we'll see
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: you soon.
• 34:05
  Speaker 5: Sounds good.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large and Hugh in
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: the studio. Has been incredibly quiet today, very very quiet,
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: which is quite normal and from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: for your company. We'll see you on the very next
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: episode of Space Nuts.
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: Bye bye snus. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, all your favorite podcast player.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bytes dot com.
• 34:37
  Speaker 6: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.