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Nebulae and Time - Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries: #504 · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us yet again on another
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: episode of Space Nuts. This is a Q and A edition.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: My name is Andrew Duncle, your host. Good to have
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: your company. What we're going to tackle today is questions
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: about bright nebulae. And that's a question that comes from
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Dan and it's probably not what you're thinking in terms
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: of what he might be asking. He probably don't know
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: what the heck he's asking at all, but we will
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: tell you. Also, this one came through Instagram. Renee has
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: sent us an article about light traveling in two directions?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: What's that about? Rusty has a three body problem? And
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Martin wants to talk about brown dwarf stars and he
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: also wants to tell us a poem. It's always dangerous,
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: but we're going to do it here on Space Nuts.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Fifteen, Channel ten nine ignition Space Nuts NI or three
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: two one Beast Nuts and actually bought it real good.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: He's back again for more. His name he's Professor fred
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: what's an astronomer at Cello fred Ullo?
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Andrew, glad to be here.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: Good to have you here. Yeah. Is it funny how
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: we always seem to wear the same shirts two episodes running?
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: That works?
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Very strange phenomenon. Now we might as well get straight
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: into it and tackle out first question, which comes from Dan.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: Hi, gentlemen, as Dan from the Gold Coast. I just
• 1:38
  Speaker 4: wanted to know with some of the bright, kind of
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: more colorful nebula, like the Karna helix outside that kind
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: of stuff would being inside there, could you would you
• 1:54
  Speaker 4: be able to actually see all those colors or like,
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: you know, is it kind of like once you're in
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: a you know, when.
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: You're up high in the bog and that it's a
• 2:02
  Speaker 5: little less noticeable.
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Is that what it's like in there? Or do we
• 2:06
  Speaker 3: not really know what it would be like.
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: Thanks for taking my question, love the show, and thanks
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: for keeping me company my deliveries for work.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: There's go nice one. Thank you damn glad we can
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: keep you company. Bright nebulae, when they're photographed, they look extraordinary.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Some of the colors are amazing. But when you photograph
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Earth it's the same thing. But when you're down here
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: you go the same into a nebulae or a nebula,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: I think you would see the colors actually, So you've
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: got to imagine. First of all, you're not just sitting
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the nebula. You probably in order
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: to round a star on a you know, imagine it's
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: on a planet that's around.
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: The star in one of those nebulae. Now, the issue
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: is this may not happen because there we know that
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: those nebulae are associated with staff foaming regions, so they're
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: young stars that are in them, and some of those
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: young stars might be too young to have mature planets
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: with intelligent life on it. But if there was intelligent
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: life on the you know, the star of a or
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: the planet of the star in a glowing nebula, I
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: think you'd see the color. I think you would see
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: a background and it would probably predominantly be pink because
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: that's the color of excited hydrogen. What's exciting it is
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: the ultraviolet light being given off by a nearby star.
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: That ultraviolet light will be lethal.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: For us anyway, So I knew there'd be all of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: some kind.
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you might, you might not see see it for
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: very long, but yes, I think I think if your
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: eye was in there, you would see the colors.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: That's interesting because.
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: Maybe more subtly than what we seeing some of the photographs.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: But yeah, a lot of those photographs have to be enhanced,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and you know, to bring out the detail I suppose,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and those photographs have improved over time with technology, because
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: some of the early photographs of like the horsehead Nebula
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: were a bit fuzzy, but if you look at the
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: latest crop of them, they are certainly high definition. Yeah,
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: that's right.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: That's largely a result of bigger telescopes. I mean, it
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: was my colleague and friend David Marlin, who lives not
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: very far from here that they view. He was the
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: person who first put colors into images and the stars
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  Speaker 3: using predominantly photographs, And there were photographs from the young
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: Australian telescope and the UK Schmidt telescope.
• 4:53
  Speaker 5: That's so.
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: Then I came to Australia to work on so he
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: and I was going to say, when you talked about
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: enhancement things like that, he took extraordinary pains to make
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: sure that the colors he were presenting he was presenting
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: were what your unaided I would see if you had
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: a much bigger telescope. He in fact, he was obsessive
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: about it, the color balance, to the extent that he
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: would get really upset if he went to give a
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: talk about these things. And the video projector that was
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: being used was not up to scratch. He'd be tinkering
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: with the adjustments, trying to fix it before the talk,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: and so his images were a representation. Now, you're quite
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: right that, you know, when those images came out in
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: the nineteen seventies and eighties, they were mind blowing. Nobody
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: had ever seen anything like them. But we now have
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: images from much bigger telescopes. Well, we've got images from
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: space telescopes which by definition don't have the the the
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: you know, the blurring effect of the atmosphere in front
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: of them. They're they're seeing perfect, perfect images unfettered by
• 6:09
  Speaker 3: the atmosphere. And also from the ground, we're seeing from
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: much bigger telescopes, now twice as big, and that also
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: affects the definition. So yes, the current crop of images
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: which we're getting from the Web telescope, the very large telescope,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: the Gemini telescopes, all of those, they are stunning. You're
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: absolutely right.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: Okay, question with that, notice which nebula is the brightest
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and most colorful?
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there are two very bright ones that
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: the probably the one that everybody on Earth can see
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: because it's right on the celestial equator, is the Orion nebula,
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: and that's visible clearly with the naked eye, big gas
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: cloud in the constellation of Orion right just below it's
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: actually the handle of Orion's sword, that's where it is,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: or the handle of the sauce pan, depending on which
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: way up you're looking at it. Yeah, and the other
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: the lagoon nebulas very bright as well. That's one of
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: the southern hemisphere nebulas in the Southern Milky Way.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, really good, Dan. If you would like to look
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: at some of David Mayland's amazing photography, just do a
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: web search for his name because pop up. And he
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: was a real piney.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, very much so. And he was well highly regarded.
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: He won many awards, including the sort of Nobel Prize
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: of imaging, which is the Lennart Neilson Award. He yes see,
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: it became very famous because of his images being so,
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: you know, so widely distributed. They were sought after for
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: record album covers and magazine covers and books and many
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: very eminent astronomers today to to name, in fact, probably
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: three name three Dame Jocelyn Belbanell, Brian Cox, Brian Schmidt.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Credit David's David's photography for some of their interests. Actually,
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: Joscelyn was already well into astronomy, but she's always had
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: high praise for David's photography.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: I'm sure David would not be a fan of the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: cameras on an iPhone because I read an article today
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: just to learn a bit more about how to use
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: the camera on my phone, and I found out that
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: because of the artificial intelligence that's brought into them, they
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: do tend.
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: To not.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Produce what is really seen. I mean, to an unaided eye,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: it looks like the photo that you took. But the
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: way the artificial intelligence works, it takes a very educated
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: guess as to what you're photographing and filled in the blanks.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: And I thought that is weird. I mean, that's not
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: how camera should work. But what's interesting about it is
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: that they question whether or not some of the photos
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: taken by iPhones would actually be legitimate evidence in court.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, even though.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: The image is obviously what you took a photo of, Yes,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: it's not an image of the it's not the it's
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: not it's not.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: A genuine representation of what the things look like.
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Yes, Yeah, it's quite incredible and a good question. And
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: you know, keep on trucking or vanning or whatever it
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: is you do.
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: Space nuts.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: Now, our next question sort of came about by accident.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: I was just sort of meiling around on the interwebs
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: over the weekend and I saw a little one and
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: you know the little ones that are on your smart devices,
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: and I thought, oh gosh, someone sent us a message
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: through the spacepp Instagram page, which I very rarely look at,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: and it Renee High Renee and she said, I found
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: this article. Maybe you guys can have a talk about it.
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: That was the question. The article was about how physicists
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: have uncovered evidence of two arrows of time emerging from
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: the quantum realm. Now, this is getting into tricky science spread,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: but light is always an intriguing subject. So I thought
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: we might ever talk about this one.
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's I mean, it's time we're talking about, not lie,
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: it's actually time fluing.
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Oh sorry, I said, like time.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so you know, we the conventional view is
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: that there's an arrow of time that just goes one way,
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: and it's linked with the second law of thermodynamics, which
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: is all about entropy, which is the randomness or disorder
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: that you find in a system. And all of that
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: stuff gets mixed up. But we've i mean, proventual physics
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: has believed that the arrow of time only goes one way.
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: But this new paper, it's suggesting that in quantum, in
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: the quantum world, there might be another one that you
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: can basically, you know, follow time going in a different direction.
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: It's going the other way, in other words, going from
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: future to past.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: Work that one out. I'm struggling to understand the concept.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I know there's been a lot of science fiction about
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: time travel, and I know there's been experimentation.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like as you said in the past, traveling through
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: time would require more energy than there is in the universe.
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So that's the time warp. That's right.
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: That's yeah, the warping of it.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: But experiments into time into time have shown that movement
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: does disrupt the time. Time continuable.
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: Well, that's right, time sometimes flexible. We know that because
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: of relativity tells us that either by things traveling very
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: fast or putting it in a gravitational field that bends time.
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: But this is something different, the arrows of time. I've
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: got the University of Surrey, which is where this work
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: has been done. I've got their press release in front
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: of me, and I'm just going to read from that
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: because it's a very succinct way of expressing it. A
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: new study reveals that opposing arrows of time can theoretically
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: emerge from certain quantum systems. And there's a quote from
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: doctor Andrea Rocco, who's an associate professor in physics and
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: mathematical biology the University of Surrey, Surrey, and it says,
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: the quote is one way to explain this is when
• 12:52
  Speaker 3: you look at a process like spilt milk spreading across
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: a table, it's clear that time is moving forward. But
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: if you want to play that in reverse like a movie,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: you'd immediately know something was wrong. It would be hard
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: to believe milk could just gather back into a glass. However,
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: there are processes, such as the motion of a pendulum,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: that look just as believable in reverse. The puzzle is
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: that at the most fundamental level, the laws of physics
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: resemble the pendulum. They do not account for irreversible processes.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Our findings suggest that while our common experience tells us
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: that time only moves one way, we are just unaware
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: that the opposite direction would have been equally possible. Gosh.
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's just hard to wrap your head around.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Really.
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: It gets harder when you look at actually what they've done,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: and it is all in the sub atomic world. You're
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: talking about quantum systems and the way they interact with
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: their environment. It's very interesting stuff, but it is quite
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: you know, it's quite dense.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, the I know.
• 13:58
  Speaker 3: So that there's another sentence if I may, from the
• 14:02
  Speaker 3: University of Sorry press release this. Yeah, the system behaved
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: in this is the something that's working on a theoretical
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: you know, in a theoretical quantum environment, the system behaved
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: the same way whether time moves forwards or backwards. And
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: that's saying you know, it's like a pendulum, which can
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: you don't notice the difference either way time moving either way.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: The discovery provided a mathematical foundation for the idea that
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: time reversed symmetry still holds in open quantum systems, suggesting
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: that time zarrow may not be as fixed as we experience.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Wow. Of course there's a lot of work going on
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: in the quantum realm every Yeah, because they're trying to
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: crack the secrets of developing quantum computing. And if they
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: do that, it's just going to change. It's just going
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: to change everything that's right. That may come. The day
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: may come where we have quantum computers in the home.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I don't think it'll be soon, but you know, computers
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: in households are so common now, whereas when I was
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: a kid, the Cassio calculator was a new thing, and
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: when you were a kid, the abbactus would have been. Yeah.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: The best thing I had was my slide drew. Yeah, yeah,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: I've got a soft spot for slide Riel's. Actually I
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: just found one in a tip shop just a few
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: days ago, which is a lovely little nine inch slid.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: Look at that in its own box. It's been the
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: treasured possession of some engineer probably. It's a very nice
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: little purchase.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: Wow, pick up in those little that's right.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Not much more we can say about this one, but
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: thank you Renee for sort of bringing it to our attention.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to read up on the arrows of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: time not light time, Surrey dot ac dot UK is
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the site. This is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here with
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: Professor Fred. What's anace nuts? Okay, Fred, Let's move on
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: to our next question with one of our regular collaborators,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: and that is Rusty.
• 16:40
  Speaker 6: Gooday Fred and Andrew, Andrew and Fred, it's Rusty and
• 16:42
  Speaker 6: Donnybrook mean, awhile at this time of the year, who
• 16:46
  Speaker 6: knows where you two are.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting at home.
• 16:49
  Speaker 6: I hope this finds you, and I hope it finds you.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 16:52
  Speaker 6: Been looking at the three body problem of the Earth, Moon,
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: and Sun. In terms of lagrange points in the Sun
• 16:59
  Speaker 6: Moon sitt stem. The L one and L two points
• 17:03
  Speaker 6: in that Sun moon system lie about twenty nine thousand
• 17:06
  Speaker 6: kilometers from the center of the Moon, or about twenty
• 17:10
  Speaker 6: seven thousand kilometers from the Moon's surface.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: If the Moon was or.
• 17:18
  Speaker 6: Bring the Sun without the Earth, they'd be pretty stable.
• 17:22
  Speaker 6: But the Moon goes around the Earth at about with
• 17:26
  Speaker 6: an orbital speed of about one kilometer a second, and
• 17:29
  Speaker 6: the two of them travel around the Sun at about
• 17:31
  Speaker 6: thirty kilometers per second. So the impact on L two,
• 17:38
  Speaker 6: for example, in the Sun moon system would be fairly slight,
• 17:46
  Speaker 6: and the impact of the Earth Moon L one and
• 17:50
  Speaker 6: L two positions, which are about four thousand kilometers further
• 17:54
  Speaker 6: out from the Moon, would be probably the biggest effect there.
• 18:00
  Speaker 6: They would have the distorting effect. The question is the
• 18:04
  Speaker 6: Sun moon l two point, perpetually shaded by the body
• 18:08
  Speaker 6: of the Moon. Would that not be a great place
• 18:12
  Speaker 6: to have a habitat? It would shelter, it'd be healing
• 18:19
  Speaker 6: there from solar weather. And to build it lighter, say
• 18:26
  Speaker 6: fifty percent lighter, probably, Wouldn't that be a great place
• 18:30
  Speaker 6: to have a habitat. Anyway, Yeah, I'd love to hear
• 18:35
  Speaker 6: your comments on that one. And I've really been enjoying
• 18:38
  Speaker 6: the show. I haven't had a chance to say anything. Cheers,
• 18:42
  Speaker 6: Thanks Rusty. Nice to hear from you.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: Yes, we're in the country together at the same time
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: for a change, but it's only for short only for
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: a short while. I think I'm the next to make
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: a sojourn overseas. Rusty's three Body Problem talks about the Earth,
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Moon and Sun lagrange points. Bottom line is is the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: Sun moon lagrange point a good place for a habitat?
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: And the answer is no.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Oh gee, I thought it would go the other way.
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: No, and it's and rust has already put his finger
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: on it. Those they don't really exist, those La Grange points,
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: because they're completely unstable. The fact you know that you've
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: got the Earth right next door. If it was just
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: the Sun and the Moon. Yes, that would all be great,
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: or all would work. But you've got this massive object,
• 19:37
  Speaker 3: the Earth, eighty times the mass of the Moon, two
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: hundred and fifty hundred and eighty thousand kilometers away, and
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: it basically just disrupts the Sun Moon lagrange points. So
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: it's it's got really no stability worth speaking of, and
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: so it wouldn't be a good place to try and
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: put a spacecraft.
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: You do, in fact have, with the Sun, the Earth,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: and the Moon, a three body problem.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Uh you do, yes, that's right. It is a it's
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: a three body problem, and the two the two absolutely
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: significant bodies in that are the Earth and the Sun.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: The Moon. You know, it almost doesn't register. It's possible
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: to define, to calculate where those lagrange points will be,
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: but they're so unstable that there's no there's no point
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: in trying to put something there.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: You'd constantly be having to move around to stay in
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: the right place.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: I imagine, Uh, yeah, that's right, you burn all your fuel.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Up unless you've got to win a bago. I mean, yeah, yeah,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: that would that would work. They've made their wear into space.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: Although there are lagrange points that we've found very advantageous,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and we've got a couple of observatories. Yeah, you get
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: around those points, that's right.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: That's the the Sun Earth the grounds points where you're right,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: there's there's observatories that both L one and L two
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: l ones between the Sun and the Earth. L two
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: is on the opposite side of the from the Sun
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: a million and a half kilometers away, and that's where
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: the Web telescope is, for example the Gaia spacecraft.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: But again you're not staying still. They still have to maneuver.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Just that's right.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: I send it. It's like a spiral movement from what
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I can tell.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the kind of in orbit around the around
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: the stable point. But it's not that stable. You know,
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: if you if you get tipped off one way, you
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: could run away. So you do need to keep burning
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: fuel to keep it in the right place. It's called
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: station keeping, and I think that's the everyday you know,
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: the everyday job of some of these spacecraft drivers, if
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: I can call them that.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So ultimately with an object like James Web,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: the fuel is going to run out.
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's right, and that's actually what we'll limit the
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: life of the Web telescope the fuel that will keep
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: it in the right place. I think they've got more
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: than they're expected to have. When they launched it, they
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: thought they had a ten year life, but I think
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: they're now talking about more like twenty years. So that's
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: really good, wonderful.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Although in twenty in the twenty year life span of
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: James Web, the technology is probably going to jump even more. Yes,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: there'll be telescopes that will be far more superior, which
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: is what happened Hubble basically yep, although it's still doing
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: a fantastic job. So Rusty's answer is no, no go unfortunately,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: although I'm sure the day will come with I'll put
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: a habitat out there somewhere and or a space station
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: of some kind and I think Earth all but would
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: be the logical way to go at this point, wouldn't
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: you say? Yes?
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Sorry? Do you mean around the moon? Moon orbit?
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, moon orbit, Yeah, that's right.
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: Well, the parts of the Artemis deal is to have
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: the Gateway spacecraft, which is exactly that, it's a mini
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: space stationd in Ubus around the Moon. I don't know
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: whether it's ever going to happen, but that's certainly in
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: the planning.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, no, all right, thanks Rusty. As always
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: deep thought type questions coming from you. Speaking of deep thought,
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: next and final question comes from Martin.
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: Hello space Nuts, Martin Berman. Gorvine here, writer extraordinaire in
• 23:40
  Speaker 5: many genres, recording this in Potomac, Maryland, USA, although by
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: the time you broadcast it, I may well have joined
• 23:56
  Speaker 5: you down under because I do not wish to live
• 24:02
  Speaker 5: under the possible rain of the orange nero. So I
• 24:10
  Speaker 5: have a question about the brown dwarf stars that you
• 24:16
  Speaker 5: blokes were discussing. See how I said, blokes, Ah, could
• 24:26
  Speaker 5: there be in theory an earth sized moon of such
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: a brown dwarf star circling in orbiting it in a
• 24:41
  Speaker 5: possible goldilot zone, And would it then be possible for
• 24:48
  Speaker 5: this world to support earth like life as we know it?
• 24:54
  Speaker 5: If the answer be yes, what would the brown dwarf
• 24:59
  Speaker 5: star look like in its sky? And I have written
• 25:06
  Speaker 5: a poem about this possibility, inspired by doctor Fred Watson
• 25:15
  Speaker 5: and mister Robbie burns Hem. All that I know of
• 25:23
  Speaker 5: a brown dwarf star is it can glow, but not
• 25:29
  Speaker 5: very far. Now at dart of bronze, now at dart
• 25:33
  Speaker 5: of tan, behold its long fronds, The color of brand
• 25:39
  Speaker 5: my star that dartles the bronze and the tan. No,
• 25:44
  Speaker 5: it's not like a turd. It had fun and world
• 25:49
  Speaker 5: busy fusing away like the stars all above it. What
• 25:53
  Speaker 5: is circling it is a Goldilocks world. What a strange,
• 25:58
  Speaker 5: lovely thought. I really do love it. And you can
• 26:03
  Speaker 5: send uh, thank you, thank you. You can send the
• 26:07
  Speaker 5: royalties for that to me either in Potomac if the
• 26:12
  Speaker 5: Orange Nero has not returned, or maybe in Dubbo if
• 26:16
  Speaker 5: he has berman gorvine over and out out.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: That is priceless, absolutely priceless, Martin, Thank you. I know
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: it's taken me a little while to get to that one,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: because apparently the Orange Nero is alive and kicking.
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: So you might look out for Martin on the streets
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: of Dubbo.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, I'll chip an eye out for him. And
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: you're more than welcome Martin anytime, anytime. I love that pole.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: That was brilliant, very very good. So the earth sized
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: moon orbiting a brown dwarf star in the Goldilocks zone,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: could it's sustained life as we know it?
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Well, it wouldn't be as we know it because the
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: peak energy output of a brown dwarf star is well
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: into the infrared. Ah, they've got a low surface temperature.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: I'm just trying to think whether they even have a
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: Goldilock zone. I guess they must do, but it might
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: be very close to the surface of the brown dwarf
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: because they glow just by, you know, by their internal
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: low level nuclear reactions. So just let's think about so
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: if I imagine the you know, thinking about warm bodies
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: like us, we radiate at ten microns in the infrared.
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: That's the wavelength that we emit in the infrared because
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: of our natural heat. And I don't think brown dwarfs
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: are that far away. They're probably a bit warmer than that.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: They're probably more, you know, rather warmer than whatever it
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: is thirty thirty seven degrees celsius that we we have
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: to be. So would there be a Goldilocks So I
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: need to check on that whether you're now okay, good, Yeah.
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Apparently you can calculate it. So it does have a
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Goldilocks zone, although it does there's one article I'm reading
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: that says that the first ten million years of a
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: brown dwarf might have a temperature close to three thousand kilp.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Then reasonable habitable zone to go with.
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: Who.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but look, I haven't got anything inhabited.
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a young brown dwarf. So old brown dwarfs
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: you probably forget it. Yeah, habitable zone is on the surface.
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: They do have weather, the brown dwarf stars. Yeah. Yeah.
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: One of my colleagues, Christini, before it became an expert
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: on the extra sol planets, used to study brown dwarfs,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: and I think one of his papers was about the
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: weather on brown dwarfs.
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: Okay, you know, well, there's a graph there that gives
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: me an indicator of a habitable zone around a brown dwarf.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: But I don't understand it. It's got all these ten
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: to the fifth, ten to the sixth numbers.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: I'd better have a look at that.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, but I suppose the answer is, yes, there's
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: a habitable zone under certain circumstances in the early life
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: of a brown dwarf. But yeah, how do you predict
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: what kind of life could be?
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly, you know, we're very tuned to the wavelength
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: submitted by the Sun, where sort of our vision is
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: predicated around visible light, picking the green region of the spectrum.
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: I guess a creature could evolve with infrared sensitive eyes.
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: That's not out of a question. It's not impossible wood.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Have what do rattlesnakes?
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, there you go.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And so.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: But would it be life as we know it? Well,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: it might be rattle snakes, Yeah.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Could be. It's hard to know. But and as we've
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: talked about it in the past about how different stars
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: would create different kinds of habitat, Like the vegetation would
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: be very different. If let's say you had a planet
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: round I don't know, a very big, bright blue star,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: everything would be different as life as we know it
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: would not look like that. If you went into a
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: forest on a planet round a star like that, it
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: would be a completely different kettle of leaves would yeah,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: not leaves. All the colors would be different, All the
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: variations would be different because life would have to adapt
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: to a completely different light pattern and heat pattern and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: everything else, radiation, et cetera. So, yeah, it's a bit
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: of an unknown Martin as to what kind of life
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: would exist on a moon sized planet orbiting a brown
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: dwarf star. But if it was possible, it would not
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: be life as we know it. I think that was
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: the basis of your question. So I think we can
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: give you a no on that one, but not a
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: no on life of some other kind.
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: Not as we know it, not if we know it.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: James T. Kirk would probably say that to it's life Jim,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: but not as we know it. No, that wasn't Jim,
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: that was doctor thing. No.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: Oh, bones, bone bone, not.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: As we know it. Thanks Martin, loved the poem you
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: were to publish that. That was hilarious and we are done.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Don't forget to send your questions into us via our
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: website because we love to get them and we're always
• 32:07
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• 32:10
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• 32:13
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• 32:17
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• 32:20
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• 32:22
  Speaker 1: a look around while you're there. Visit the space Nuts shop.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: It's always fun, plenty of things to grab hold of.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: If somebody special is having a birthday soon, you might
• 32:31
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• 32:33
  Speaker 1: who knows. And thanks as always, Fred. It's been a
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: great pleasure.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Good to talk Andrew, and look forward to doing it again.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Very good. We'll see you soon. Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: at Large. And thanks to Hue in the studio because
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: he's always helpful, except today when he couldn't be with
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: us because he was out babysitting his brown dwarf. And
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll catch
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: you on the very next episode of Space Nuts and
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: then bye bye. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts
• 33:04
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