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Lunar Water Mysteries, Interstellar Juice & Graphene's Cosmic Potential · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: By there. Thanks for joining us on Space Nuts, where
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: we talk astronomy and space science. My name is Andrew Dunkley.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's great to have your company coming up today. We're
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: going to talk water, we're going to talk juice, and
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: we're going to mix it up with graphine. That's it
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: all coming up soon on this edition of Space Nuts.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Fifteen seconds guidance in channel ten nine ignition.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Sequence Space Nuts side or three two one Space Nuts
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: as can I reported. Bill's good and he's back. It
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: is Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. We got off
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: to a quick start today. Fred, so far, so good.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Don't speak too soon. It's very good to see you, Andrew,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: and I'm sure everything will go flawlessly.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: This mornko to see you too. I meant to ask
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: you something off camera, but I forgot all about it.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: But he did a little trip the other day in
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: your new ev we did. Now you were traveling four
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: hundred and five kilometers on a four hundred kilometer battery.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: How did that go?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: We look, it was a learning curve, a very steep
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: learning curve because we've never done that before. I never
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: used a roadside charger or any of the other things.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: So we stopped about a third of the way in Maitland,
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: your hometown. We charged the car, but we only added
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: twenty kilometers to me I think, or maybe forty because
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: we because it was a slow charger. So we stopped
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: again at at Now where was it's gone? It's going, Yes,
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: up the Conta valley and ran into a couple who
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: were from Maitland, and they were quite elderly. But I said,
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: you don't happen to know the Dunkeley family, do you?
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Told her why I was asking, and she said, I
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: do know of the Dunkeleys. I can't say I know
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: them though, but I do know of the Dunkeleys. Yeah,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: we had a nice conversation, but they showed us how well.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: They sort of helped us as money fathomed out how
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: to use the NRM FUST charger, which solved the problem.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: And then on the way back we found the NRM
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: FUST charger in Boritland.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: So yeah, they're starting to pop up everywhere. They're putting
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  Speaker 1: two new ones on the New Highway West at the moment,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: and they've got two at the Western Plains Cultural Center
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: as well, and they've got Tesla charges there and an
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: NRMA charger. But they're just starting to like, this is
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: not this is not going to stop, hope, not given
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: what's been happening in the world lately. So I'd say,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: and people have actually said to me, I'm done with
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: all this. I'm buying an AV I think EV sales
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: again to skyrocket that there.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Already are doing. Yeah, there was some numbers I saw
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the other day, and they're just going up like that.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: We were kind of ahead of the curve a bit,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: which I'm very club because otherwise we might have been
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: waiting for months for.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: Well, we're halfway there. We've got a hybrid hybrid yet
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: still very economical, especially around town.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great for culture driving.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: As well, it is. Yeah, yeah, all right, Yes, brave
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: new world we're walking into or driving into, by the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: sound of it. But yeah, not before time.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I would suggest, Well, that's right for the climate at least,
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: that's right.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Indeed, all right, we'll get down to business. Like I said,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: we're talking water and juice, and we're going to mix
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: in a little bit of graphene and then we're going
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: to hold our nose and guzzle. But first let's talk
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: about water and more specifically the water that they think
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: is on the Moon and how it got there, now
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: that's the big mystery. But they're starting to think that
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: it might have been a slow release system rather than
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: one big event.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, exactly, that's right. There's two stories here that have
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  Speaker 2: got separate media releases, and they're telling the same story.
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  Speaker 1: But there are all kind of inflicting with a different nuance.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. So the first one comes from the Laboratory for
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado, Boulder,
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  Speaker 2: and it's about, as you've said, it's about how the
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  Speaker 2: water that we do believe is exists as ice in
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: the deepest, darkest craters near the moon's south pole. That
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: basically is how it got there and in particular why
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: it's in some craters and not but not all of them.
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  Speaker 2: It's just in some h and it's the study has
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  Speaker 2: basically looked at the possibilities for how, how the how
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  Speaker 2: the water got there. So the bottom line, there's a
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  Speaker 2: there's basically a nice quote here from Paul Hayne, who's
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  Speaker 2: the i think the lead the lead article or the
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  Speaker 2: lead author of this, who says it looks like the
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  Speaker 2: Moon's oldest creators. Also have the most ice. That implies
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  Speaker 2: that the Moon has been accumulating water more or less
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  Speaker 2: continuously for as much as three to three and a
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  Speaker 2: half billion years. And he goes on say finding water
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  Speaker 2: beyond Earth in liquid and usable form is one of
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  Speaker 2: the most important challenges in astronomy. And I think that's
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  Speaker 2: probably right. So the mechanism that they're suggesting, and another
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: quote from Paul Hayne that the mechanism is not quite
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: what you might think it would be, because we, naturally,
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: you and I, being space nuts, would turn our thoughts
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: to icebergs, flying icebergs, which we call comets, And certainly
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  Speaker 2: that's one of the sources that it has been looked
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  Speaker 2: at as to how the water got there. They've also
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  Speaker 2: looked at whether volcanic activity back in the the Moon's
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: volcanic era might have brought water up from deep down
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: inside the Moon. So all of that those considerations have
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: been taken into account. But one that you and I
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  Speaker 2: might not have thought of is the solar wind. That
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: the charge particles that come from the Sun are basically
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  Speaker 2: contributing to the water on the Moon's surface. And once
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  Speaker 2: again Paul Haynes says, through the solar wind a constant
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: stream of hydrogen bombards the Moon, and some of that
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  Speaker 2: hydrogen can be converted to water on the lunar surface,
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  Speaker 2: so that no matter where it came from. That these
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: researchers believe that the isis sort of built up, and
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  Speaker 2: they use the term coal traps. We used to use
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: that in engineering for cryogenic devices, coal traps, which to
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  Speaker 2: them are craters on the Moon's surface that are in
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  Speaker 2: permanent shadow from the sun and in some cases haven't
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  Speaker 2: seen the sun for billions of years, and they're going
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  Speaker 2: to be very very cool places, and that's where the
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  Speaker 2: water has accumulated. One of the one of the quote
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  Speaker 2: what's clear is that the ice has a patch of distribution.
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  Speaker 2: It's not concentrated in the same quantities in every crater,
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  Speaker 2: and they don't have an explanation for.
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  Speaker 1: That except maybe the age of the craters. Yes, that's
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  Speaker 1: more water in the older ones.
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  Speaker 2: The longer it's called being a core trap for the
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  Speaker 2: more water it's likely to have.
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  Speaker 1: It's interesting that it sounds like a lot of the
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  Speaker 1: water has been created on the Moon by the solar winds.
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  Speaker 1: That that's fascinating.
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  Speaker 2: It is, isn't it.
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  Speaker 1: That maybe build up over time through meteorite impacts or something.
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  Speaker 1: Because everything's got a bit of water in it. I
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  Speaker 1: guess it does.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, at some level. Most most rocks that we think
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  Speaker 2: about in planetary ology, I've got some water in them.
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  Speaker 2: Not all of them, but some of them do.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah.
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  Speaker 2: So yes, the idea of a single big impact with
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  Speaker 2: a comet filling up these craters seems to be ruled out.
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  Speaker 2: It seems to have been a longer process.
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  Speaker 1: Well, they've ruled that out with Earth too, haven't they.
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  Speaker 1: Wasn't there a study some years ago we discussed that
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  Speaker 1: said most of Earth's water probably was already here. It
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  Speaker 1: just in the conglomeration of what became Earth. There was
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  Speaker 1: already moisture in the planet. It just took all that
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  Speaker 1: time to surface when the conditions were right.
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  Speaker 2: That's correct, and that's because you know what, the studies
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  Speaker 2: that have been made of the water in comets seems
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  Speaker 2: to suggest that it's generally speaking, not always, but generally
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  Speaker 2: speaking's got a different isotopic ratio or ratio of normal
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  Speaker 2: water to heavy water than what we have here on Earth.
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  Speaker 2: So that that kind of put the boot into the
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  Speaker 2: idea that comet bombardment was the thing that actually produced
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  Speaker 2: the Earth water, the thing that principally produced the Earth water.
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  Speaker 2: And the suggestion now exactly as you've said, is that
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  Speaker 2: much of it comes from the rocks themselves, from which
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  Speaker 2: the from which the Earth was made, and so the
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  Speaker 2: same the same thing would apply on the in the
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  Speaker 2: case of the Moon.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, well we've seen it with Mars as well,
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  Speaker 1: which we talked about the other day, where the water
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  Speaker 1: there is not the same as Earth. It's saltier and
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  Speaker 1: there's more deuterium in it than non Earth. I think
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  Speaker 1: was the remembering rightly.
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  Speaker 2: I think that's right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, And this other article about the water on the
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  Speaker 1: Moon suggests that there, you know, it's definitely there, but
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  Speaker 1: there might be enough of it for future need when
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  Speaker 1: it comes to you know, getting on the Moon and
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: starting to make rocket fuel and all the other.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, that we talk about. That's right. So this is
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  Speaker 2: work being done at the University of Hawaii and they
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: have looked actually at high resolution images from various spacecraft
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: like Lunary Reconnaissance Orbiter, and these are I think these
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: are quite new observations. And I'm sure some of the
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  Speaker 2: imagery coming back from Artemis too will probably contribute to
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  Speaker 2: this as well. But what they're saying from the views
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  Speaker 2: that they're now having of these deep craters that the
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  Speaker 2: ice that we believe is in them is a lot
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  Speaker 2: more diffuse than was thought to be the case, suggesting
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  Speaker 2: that it might not be quite so easy as we've
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  Speaker 2: hoped to dig up the water turn it into sorry,
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: dig up the ice, turn it into water, and dissociate
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  Speaker 2: it to hydrogen and oxygen. And so it is a
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  Speaker 2: very important result. They're suggesting there isn't as much as
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  Speaker 2: we've really been led to believe, and so these permanently
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  Speaker 2: shadow regions or cold traps as we were just talking about,
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  Speaker 2: might not have as much water as was thought. Part
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: of that comes from some of the earlier missions that
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: once again orbiting robotic spacecraft Lunar Prospector from NASA Chandra
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Yarn one, which is an Indian spacecraft. They detected a
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  Speaker 2: hydrogen signature which they interpreted as being due to water ice,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: but it's suggesting that maybe there's more possians than water.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: This work from the University of Hawaii, So actually they
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  Speaker 2: used an instrument specifically designed for this purpose that flew
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: on a spacecraft which I think might still be operational
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: the Career Pathfinder lunar orbiter, which was launched back in
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. So essentially they've used a NASA instrument
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: on board that spacecraft to identify the ice and look
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: for signs of ice, and they think it's quite quite
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  Speaker 2: low the proportion.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: That's a bit of a worry given what they're planning,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: like the Moon being at jump point for missions to Mars,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: putting a permanent residential state on them. Yes, that kind
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: of thing. And Elon must now I thinks he'll go
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to the Moon instead of Mars. So you know, water
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  Speaker 1: is an essential, absolute essential. So if there's not enough
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: of it there to do all this stuff, we're going
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: to have to take it.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: One of the comments from the authors of this second paper,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: the University of Away paper. One of the authors has commented,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: orbital measurements like those that are reported in the current
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: paper are fabulous in that they can provide broad regional surveys,
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: but oftentimes what you're looking for can only be addressed
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: by in situe boots on the ground exploration activities. The
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: sooner that we get robotic and human assets on the
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: lunar surface to investigate this particular issue. The sooner we'll
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: have some definitive answers. So there you go. It looks
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: as though we're looking towards Artemis four in twenty twenty
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: eight to find out whether there is ice there.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it'll also give them a chance to look
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: further into that first part of the story we were
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: talking about, because when they analyze the ice, they'll get
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: more of an idea of where it might have come from.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: Even if you know, if it was locally generated, it'll
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: have a different signature. Yeah, yes, that's correct. That's right.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: Very interesting stuff. You can read about it at fizz
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: dot org Water on the Moon, or you can go
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: to Daily Galaxy dot com for the second half of
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: the story about the lack of water on the Moon,
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: or read the article or the paper and Science Advances Advances.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: What's an the crew of Artemis.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: Two now bound for the Moon. Humanity's next great voyage
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: begins Space Nuts and Fred.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Our next story takes us from water to juice. But
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: this juice is not something you can drink, because it
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: is a spacecraft. What's really interesting, though, is how they
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: retasked it. This is an ISA spacecraft. They retasked it
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: to do a bit of an analysis on the exocomet
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: that we've seen a lot of press about this year
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: three I Atlas, and they've learned some amazing things.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: That's right exactly. So Juice, of course on this way
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: to it's the Jupiter ic Ice Moons Explorer. It's on
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: its way to Jupiter, and en route it has passed
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: not desperately close, but probably closer than we have seen
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: it past. Comet three I Applas, the interstellar comet that
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: is still whizzing through the Solar System sixty odd kilometers
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: per second. I'm not quite sure where it is now,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: but it's certainly it's certainly on its way out of
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: the Solar System. And so observations were made with a
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: camera that wasn't actually designed for looking at the at
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: the universe. I think the camera that they used is
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: a navigational camera, but it's one that has filters on
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: it that have allowed the Juice mission scientists to image
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: the comet in different color bands. And what we see
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: is basically new new information. It's the fact that there
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: is a very powerful water vapor signature which you kind
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: of expect because commets, when they get near the sun,
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: they release water as a vapor and that has its
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: own spectral signature. But what surprised everybody is the amount
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: of water vapor that's being released by three i atlas
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: two thousand kilograms every second that they're talking about, and
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: that's quite a lot. And actually the article quotes that
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: as being equivalent to seventy Olympic sized swimming pools every day.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: That's seventy megaliters. Basically swimming pool is technically a million.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, that's that's it then. So it's it's not
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: that it's not entirely unusual, you know, it's one it's
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: something that the comets varying, but it is significant. And
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: they note as well that something that stands out is
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: the steady nature of the outflow, with a suggestion that
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: even several days after the comet's closest approach to the Sun,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: that emission of water vapor was said to be remarkably consistent.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: And also, and you might expect this, that it streams
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: pretty well from the side facing the sun. That's what
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: you'd expect. That's where the radiation from the sun is
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: is hitting but they're suggesting that some of it, some
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: of the water actually comes from a kind of halo
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: of just dust grains surrounding the comet, releasing the gas
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: as they as they heat up. So it's giving scientists
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: quite a new understanding of how comets behave in the
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: vicinity of the Sun's radiation. And even though this is
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: an interstellar comet that comes from a different solar system
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: from ours, it's how you know, how there's many common
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: factors in the way it behaves compared with the way
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: a solar system comet behaves. There is it's left, it's
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: trailing a dust tail. Comets tend to have two tails,
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: one made of the gas, one made of the dust
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: because they behave in different ways. The tail is something
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: like five million kilometers long, and that's fairly typical, but
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: still it very very impressive. So it's and that will
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: be analyzed as well. The chemicals that are in that
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: tail are something else that we'll find out about, and
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: we will know a lot more about three I applus
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: when the full analysis of these data go through.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: I suppose one of the most interesting things to look
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: into will be, as we've been talking about in this episode,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: already analyzing the water from three I has because this
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: is water from a different solar system, and it will
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: be really interesting if we can to find out what
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: that water is like compared to what we know here.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it could be could be completely different, could
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: be so much the same that it'll be spooky. Who
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: knows will they be able to find that out? Do
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure that they have enough detail in the
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: observations to you know, sift that that image O, because
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: I think you need quite high resolution spectroscopic observations to
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: make that determination. But yeah, it's still possible that even
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: you know, maybe even the WEB telescope, which has the
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: spectroscopic equipment that you might need, WEB could have another
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: look and see what we've got in terms of the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: mix of normal and heavy water, because you're absolutely right,
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: that will be quite a crucial thing. I think that
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: the main thing about this story is and it's a
• 20:14
  Speaker 2: bit like Cassini, where you launch a spacecraft and you
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: think you know what it's going to do, and you
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: build it with its instruments in order to do that,
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: and then something really unexpected turns up. In the case
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: of Cassini, it was the the you know the guys
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: guys as at the south pole of Enceladus that they
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: flew through and analyzed, never expecting to have something like
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: that to to try and analyze. And likewise, with this
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: the juice camera, it's, as I said, it's a navigation camera,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: but it's given us details that we never expected to
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: see from three I Atlas. So and especially when you
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: combine it with the view from our telescopes here on Earth,
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: that gives you, for example, it gives you a really
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: great stereoscopic view of where the comet is. It gives
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: you a very high precision determination of its orbits because
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: you've got once one measurement being made from deep space
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: on juice and one being made from the Earth, so
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: you've got this really nice way of triangulating its position.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: So that's extraordinary as well.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: It is I still can't get my head past the
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: fact that every second it's ditching four four hundred pounds
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: of water or two thousand kilograms I mean every second.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Two tons every second.
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well that's unbelievable. And just for the record,
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: at the moment, three IE Atlas is eight hundred and
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: eighty two million kilometers from Earth and change okay, yeah, yeah,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: it's pushing on towards eight hundred and eighty three million
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: kilometers from Earth. That's yeah, it's getting out there. I
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: don't know which way it is going. I don't understand
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: this right ascension and declar polaination. I wouldn't know where
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: to look if you gave me that, and so you would,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I'd have to think about it though, because we don't. Yeah, yeah,
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: we do think in terms of right snsion and declination,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: most particularly when you're working astronomer and that's where you're
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: pointing your big telescope, because that's the only way you
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: can find your objects by putting out the coordinates. I
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: a little bit out of touch with that. Now. It's
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: eight years since Alas did frontline observations on the Angle
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Australian Telescope, So maybe I'm getting a bit rusty.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: Andrew, I suspect they let computers figure all that out.
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: Now, Well you do, that's right?
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, that is a great story worth reading,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: and you can get that from the ISA website, the
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: European Space Agency website. There's a Space Nuts with Andrew Andley.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: Oh no you can't. I'm jumping ahead of myself and
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: one story ahead of myself. If you want to read
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: that story about three I atlas daily oops, daily galaxy calm,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: that's one of the better. We've had a couple of
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: cardiac riffs down here too, be any time for sputs. Okay,
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: let's get to that ESI's story now, because this is
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: this is a fascinating one. We've talked before Fred about
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: testing light sales. There's been a couple of experiments. I
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: think they were doing one that fell by the wayside
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: that sounded pretty exciting, and there was talk of sending
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: a small sail driven spacecraft to Alpha Centauri at one stage.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: But yeah, they're they're still experimenting with different ways of
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: of propelling objects vast distances because solid rockets or rocket
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: fuel systems aren't going to have enough gas to get
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: very far. Basically, this idea, though, might have something. It's
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit different from the solar sale idea
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: we talked about before. A little bit different same concept,
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: but different materials. I think, yes, that's right.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you're quite right about, you know, looking at
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: solar sale propulsion to reach the nearest star. That's the
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: was the breakthrough starshot.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: That's a.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Project I think it's now wrapped up. It was basically
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: a design study to see whether this would ever be possible.
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: So the clearly work continues on the idea of using
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: optical propulsion where you beam lasers at a solar sail.
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: And so this experiment, which is indeed reported by the
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: European Space Agency, it was carried out on one of
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: those flights by an aircraft where the aircraft follows a
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: parabolic trajectory, and that effectively means you're in free fall.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: It means you are not feeling the force of gravity.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: You probably remember that the NASA version of that is
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: called the Vomit Comet because it basically upsets your inside
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: because of the zero gravity. That lovely photo I used
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: to show it a lot in talks of Stephen Hawking
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: on the Vomit Comet feeling zero gravity, and I don't
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: think he vomited, but for all his major disabilities, you
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: could just see the smile on his face as he
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: experienced weightlessness. Really really amazing. Anyway, a flight like that
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: has been used to carry out these experiments using graphene, which,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: as I'm sure you're aware, is basically a single atom thick,
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: two dimensional sheet of carbon atoms with that sort of
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: hexagonal structure. It's incredibly strong, which is very very counterintuitive,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: but it's got basically, you know, because it's got this
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: single atom honeycomb lattice structure, it makes it an extremely
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: strong material. So I think what they've done in this
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: experiment as I read it is essentially taken little balls
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: of this stuff, this graphene, put them in a vacuum
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: in a vacuum bottle with presumably with cameras alongside it,
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: and then blasted a laser at it to watch how
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: rapidly the graphene chunk will accelerate. In fact, I might
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: just read from the ESA press release because they said
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: says inside a vacuum chamber, a continuous laser beamed on
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: three small cubes made of graphene aerogel. A high speed
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: camera recorded the action through glass tubes. Graphene aerogels are
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: ultra light, highly porous materials that merge graphene's exceptional electrical
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: conductivity with the structural advantages of air or architecture. They
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: maintained strong mechanical performance despite their low density, and a
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: quote here the reaction was fast and furious. Before you
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: could even begin to blink, the graphene aer agels experienced
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: large accelerations. It was all over in thirty milliseconds. That's
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Marco bry Banti, ANISA project scientist, and the experiment was
• 27:25
  Speaker 2: called light driven propulsion of graphine aerogels in microgravity. So
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: Yes and researchers at a Belgian university and the Khalifa
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: University in UAE led the study. So apparently, though under
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Earth's gravity, these air agels hardly moved at all, but
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: if you put them in microgravity, light propulsion suddenly comes
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: into its own in terms of, as they say, velocity, thrust,
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: and distance. And another finding reported in this piece was
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: the ability to control the propulsion by tuning the light beam.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: The stronger the laser, the greater the acceleration the laser
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: pulse triggers of sharp acceleration peak, after which the aerogels
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: slow down. So this is yeah, what they say is,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: although this is still fundamental science, these promising results using
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: light to propel graphing aerogels in space is not only
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: possible but remarkably efficient, and that might point to future
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: space technologies. Solar cell propulsion here we come.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Yes, sounds like it. We're moving towards one hundred percent
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: of electric vehicles on the surface of the planet. Why
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: not you know, light propulsion off the planet. The problem
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: is stopping. But they might figure you could probably create
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: you know, let's just go leap forward in time and say, all,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: you've invented a spaceship to travel using light propulsion, and
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: then you get to where you're going, you just use
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: convention or rockets to slow down. I suppose ritros.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, you would take all that, it would
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, the only problem with that is if you
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: try and stop at an object, For example, you zoom
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: off to Alpha Centauri. If the velocity of Alpha Centauri
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: is kind of more or less the same as the
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: Earth velocity, so that the tour in the same moving
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: in the same direction and speed, then you need as
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: much fuel at the other end to stop your rocket
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: your spacecraft as you would have done to take it
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: off in the first place if you hadn't used the
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: light ceil. But that might actually be a possibility, you know,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: in the far distant future that you carry your chemical
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: fuel not to boost it to great speed, but to
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: slow it down. At the other end, it's just that
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: it it would need to be a lot because you
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: need to basically reverse all that acceleration you've put into
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: it from the light beam. You've got to get rid
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: of that somehow.
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: I've been doing a lot of research lately into long distance,
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: high speed space travel for my new trilogy, which I'm
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: into book three. I've been writing one or two chapters
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: a day NonStop. Fred I'm going berserk while the ideas
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: are coming. I'm writing them down, and I'm reaching that
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: crunch point where I've got to really tie the whole
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: thing together and then put that little twist at the
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: end that I like to do. But in the research
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: I've done, it's it's really quite complicated to accelerate out
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: of the Solar System and then get to where you're
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: going and timing the slowdown so that you don't overshoot.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: And the other problem is you can't accelerate too fast
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: or you liquify everybody in the spaceship, unless, of course,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: you've got which is you know, science fiction inertial dampness.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, science fiction inertial dumpners.
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: So they do the trick. But it is really fascinating,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: it's really fascinating to do the research and learn the
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: pitfalls of long haul high speed space travel. It's it's
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: not it's not an easy thing to do in reality
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: when you compare it to what you can do in
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: science fiction, which is anything you like, basic, anything that's great,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: that's excellent, excellent news anyway, coming soon, coming soon.
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: So it is going to be a Douglas Adam's trilogy
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: with four parts to it.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Now it's just going to be three unless I get
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: to a point where I've written enough and going on,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: there's so much more I might I.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: Don't think that's what happened to Douglas.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it can be like that. There it is. But
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: if you'd like to read about the graphene ERROWL solar
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: sale system, you can do that at the es website
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: as I mentioned earlier, or you can read the paper
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: in Advanced Science. And Fred, that brings us to the
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: end of yet another episode. Thank you, sir.
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: It's a pleasure and always good to chat about these
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: esoteric things.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: It is it is. We'll catch you on the next show.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Sounds great, Thanks Andrew.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: Thanks Fred, and while you're online listening to us, jump
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: on our website Space Nuts dot com or space Nuts
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: dot io. Have a look around. Maybe you'd like to
• 32:32
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• 32:35
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• 32:36
  Speaker 1: do all of that, or visit the shop or whatever
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: you like, or sign up for the Astronomy Daily news feed.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: You can do all of that at our website. And
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: thanks to Hugh in the studio who couldn't be with
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: us today because he was studying advanced science. It gave
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: him an awful headache and he's in hospital. And from
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll catch you
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye. You'll
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio,
• 33:11
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• 33:17
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