Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #439: JWST and the Old, Cold Exoplanet

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#439: JWST and the Old, Cold Exoplanet · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, Thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: My name is Andrew Dunkley.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Coming up on this episode, we're going to be looking
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: at a photograph. Yeah, it's finally time for us to
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: share our family photos with you. Now it's not James
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Webb Space Telescope has taken a photo of an exoplanet.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: It's not the first time it's taken a direct photo
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: of an exoplanet, but this one is very old and
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: very cold.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: And we'll tell you why.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: They've spotted spots on Mars. And the spots that they've
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: spotted could mean we've spotted life as it was. Possibly
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: we'll put a spot on that and talk about it later.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: And a Danish astronomer that dates back about four hundred
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: years or so, Ticko Brye, is in the news. We'll
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: tell you why on this edition of Space Nuts fifteen
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: in Channel ten nine.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: Ignition Space Nuts or three two red ones Space Nuts
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: and actually bought it Bills Good.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: And the man who's always spot on with his astronomy
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: and space science is Professor Fred What's an astronomer at large.
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: Fresh Very nice segue there, and thank you for that.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Couldn't help It couldn't help. It.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Gee, it's cold here.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: We have been hit with a real, a real plunge
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: in the temperatures.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: Last week we had a couple of days where it
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: got seven to eighteen, seven to nineteen degrees, which in
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: the middle of July is beautiful, but it came back
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: with a vengeance the other day. We've been plunging to
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: minuses in the early morning and barely reaching double figures
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: during the day.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And it's sunny. That's the weird part.
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: It is really cold and sunny, and that's not a
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: combination that's very, very common around here. If it's cold,
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: it's usually bleakish as well.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: But the days are beautiful, but the.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Air is freezing, and I'm well, I believe it's because
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: of an effect that's happened in Antarctica, where the troposphere
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: rose fifty degrees in just a couple of days, and
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: that causes a really big impact on the cold air
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: in Antarctica and just pushes it north, and that's what's
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: causing I don't believe.
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: There, you, Gil, and I certainly knew it was a
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: blust of Antarctica that you were getting, which is cold
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: and dry, which I guess is why you've got flear
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: sculls as well.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's lovely, but go outside your fingers starting
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: and you think what's going supposed to be warm?
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: With apologies to our Canadian listeners who want to go
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: far worse than this every year.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, indeed, although they've been dealing with forest.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Fire opposite just but we were in Juster earlier this year.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: We were there last year, and while we were there
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: we were getting fire warnings on our phones. And here
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: we are a year later and it's happening all again.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: It's just become part of the landscape in most countries
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: these days.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately. Everything good with you, Fred.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: It's so acceptable. Yes, thank you, that's agreeing. Well, no,
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: I guess the correct word, Andrew is nominal. Everything's not nominal.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great word.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: All right, and now let us get into a few stories.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: But before we get into the main crutch of it,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: you've got some news on SpaceX. We were talking about
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: the Falcon rockets a couple of weeks ago and some
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: issues there.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Things have changed, yes they have.
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: So. Falcon nines were grounded after the failure of the
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: second stage of one of them. We did talk about
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: it and it resulted in an attempt to rescue some
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: of the satellites that were twenty two or twenty three
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Starling satellites that were supposed to be being orbited, but
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: they didn't make it. And I think even though they
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: made contact with some of the the satellites, they didn't
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: get them into stable orbits. So SpaceX has investigated the
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: problem was a liquid oxygen leak to do with insulation
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: around that upper stage engine. There's a quote from SpaceX
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: which is the cause of the leak was identified as
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: a crack in a sense line for a pressure sensor
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: attached to the vehicle's oxygen system. The line cracked due
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: to fatigue caused by high loading from engine vibration and
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: looseness in the clamp that normally constrains the line. Despite
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: the leak, the second stage continue to operate throughout the
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: duration of the first burn, completed its engine shut down
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: where it ends to the coast phase of the mission
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: intended for the parking orbit. The second second burn of
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: the upper stage was planned to circularize the orbit ahead
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: of the satellite deployment, but that didn't work. Basically, a
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: long story short, but that's all been accepted by the FAA.
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: I think that's the organization that actually has to ratify
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: the capability to launch, and they've taken remedial steps. I
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: think they've actually got rid of that particular pressure sensor,
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: which has solved the problem, and so they now have
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: to go ahead to launch, and in fact they've they've
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: already carried out I think more than one launch. I
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: think they've done three this week.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Very good. Berg.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: I think I read something the other day that it's
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: said that rocket launchers are becoming so common. There's I
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: think there's almost one a day in the world.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: That's what you're getting on that way.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, when you go back to the fifties and sixties,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: they there were a rare thing, but now they've just
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: become so very common. In fact, a lot of them
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: don't even make the news because it's just that thing
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: that's right. Yes, Now, before we continue, I just want
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: to say a loo to a few of our live viewers,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: one of which is Misty. Misty is an administrator on
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: the Space Nuts podcast group Facebook page, so it gives
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: me a chance to publicly say thank you for all
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: what she does for us behind the scenes, keeping people
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: in line on Facebook.
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: That's a big job.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: And hello to Danny and regular question on our live
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: feeds is board broke build So hello to all of you.
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: Now Fred the James Webspace telescopes in the news.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Again, that's very rare as well.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: Be a fabulous job.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: I have to say, yes, it has, and it's been
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: able to take direct photographs of exoplanets. Prior to that,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: we've got artists' renditions of what an exoplanet might look
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: like and they're fantastic. But these are direct photos, although
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: they tend to be a bit fuzzy. But this latest
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: photograph of an exoplanet is a bit different from others
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: because it's possibly the oldest one they've ever found, and
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: it's a darn cold place, that's right.
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: So this is basically a star whose name is Epsilon
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Hindi A. It's in the constellation of Indus Southern hemisphere constellation.
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: It's about twelve light years away, but it has a
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: planet which has been suspected because of other observations. I'm
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: not sure what they were, whether they were I think
• 7:32
  Speaker 3: there were radio velocity observations. That means the Doppler wobble
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: technique where you actually analyze the velocity of the parent star,
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: and since that's sort of varying periodically, you can tell
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: that there's a planet pulling it out of place. And
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: that's the certainly the initial way in which most extra
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: planets were found. And then it went over to the
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: transit method, where you look at the dimming of a
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: star as a planet moves in front of it. So
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: this planet was its existence was suspected, but it's turned
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: out with the as exactly as you've said, with the
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: fact that we now have an image of this planet,
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: which is called exelon indab because the bee stands for
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: the planet, and it's actually I think it's puzzled the scientists.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: It's and in fact the scientists who are working on
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: this are at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg.
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: Of colleagues who work there, but I don't know this
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: particular one Elizabeth Matthews, who's the lead author of this paper.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: And Elizabeth says, well, we expect it to image a
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: planet in this system with the web telescope because there
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: were there, you are, because there were radial velocity indications
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: of its presence. That's the Doppler waddle technique. The planet
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: we found isn't what we have predicted. It's about twice
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: as massive, a little further from its star, and has
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: a different orbit from what we expected. The cause of
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: this discrepancy remains an open question. That's actually a really
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: important thing because if we've got it wrong when it
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: comes to interpreting these radial velocity measurements of stars, then
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: we need to know that because there's a lot of
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: work being done about things like hot jupiters and all
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: the rest of it. Things we've talked about before. So
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: what is this planets several times the mass of Jupiter
• 9:31
  Speaker 3: in an elliptical orbit one that's not circular, excuse me,
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: but it's fainter than expected at shorter infrared wavelengths, and
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: that suggests, first of all, that it has probably got
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: a cloudy atmosphere, but there may be carbon based molecules
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: in the atmosphere. Methane, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide are
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: being suggested. But the cool bit of this, and it
• 9:59
  Speaker 3: really is, is it's temperature. The average temperature of this
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: planet two degrees celsius. Wow, yeah, it's now. That's so
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: it's a Jupiter or more than Jupiter mass planet Jupiter
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: is a gas giant in our own Solar system, which
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: is at about minus ninety something like that minus ninety
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: five or thereabout degree celsius way out in the Solar system,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: so it's very cold. So this one is relatively warm
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: compared with our gas giants, but it is much cooler
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: than any other exoplanet that has been observed directly, and
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: there's about twenty five that we've seen directly. And the problem,
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: by the way, in imaging a planet directly is that
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: you're blinded by the lights of the star that it's
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: going around, because the star is right next door to
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: it and it's yet to a brillion times brighter. So
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: you've got to take away the light of the star.
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: That's done by means of an instrument called a corona graph,
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: and if you can do that cleverly enough, you can
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: leave an image of the planet itself nestling in the
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: sort of outer light of the star. That's what's happened here.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: So the issue is, as I said, it's colder than
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: any other exoplanet. That makes it harder to observe because
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: of an exoplanet that's warm emits more energy. Now this
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: star is actually it's because its name implies, because it's
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: got an A after it epsilon in the A. It's
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: the main star in a system of three other stars,
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: so it's a triplet system. It is a red dwarf star,
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: and that doesn't surprise us because red dwarfs are the
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: easiest ones to observe when it comes to subtracting the
• 11:59
  Speaker 3: light of the star because they're relatively faint, smaller, and
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: cooler than the Sun. And the the point about this
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: star is that it's hits elderly. It's probably the same
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: age as the Sun a well a half billion years,
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: and most of the extra planets that have been that
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: have been observed directly have been around much younger stars,
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: so they're much younger in there in the you know,
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: in their life history. So this one's really interesting from
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: that point of view. It's a mature planet, probably been
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: around for four or five billion years, it's going around
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: a cool red dwarf star, and and is in an
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: unexpected orbit. So there's a few little mysteries to solve there.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: And just foot note that you might know more about
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: than me. Andrew Hits well, I know, I think I
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: know where you're going. Yeah, it features I think this
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: star and fictional planets around. The staff featured on a
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: number of science fiction movies and games like Halo.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Halo, which I played when it first came out
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: with my boys.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: We loved Halo. That's a franchise that's still.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Going to the keep releasing new versions of the game.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Even made it into a TV series which lasted I
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: think two seasons. But yeah, it's featured in Halo, it's
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: featured in books, and it was a pretty popular place
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: in Star Trek episodes. So Epsilon Indie is well known
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: to the science fiction community.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: There you go.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But what's interesting is I don't think ultimately this
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: will be the oldest and coldest planet we ever find,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: but it is at the moment, and the gas giants
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: in our Solar System are colder. What does that mean
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: in terms of of how gas giants age or is
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: it just to do with proximity to the star?
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Maybe yes, I mean we think that gas giants get
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: big because they are cold. And you know, in the
• 14:11
  Speaker 3: Solar System, the gas giants are all beyond the frost line.
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: So that means that water they put the commonest too
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: element molecule in the universe, could could freeze out, and
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: so probably what you've got is a rocky core with
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: a very heavy, massive, pretty dense layer of ice around it.
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: But it may be that this planet, like the one
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: we were talking about in the last but one episode
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: of space Nuts, has migrated into a closer orbit and
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: that might push its temperature up.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Ah Okay, well, yeah, I suppose that's something they'll be
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: able to analyze if they can collect the data.
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: It's such a I mean, it's not.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: It's not a long way away from us, but it's
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: still a long way, you.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Know, that's right, it is. So yeah. So it's a
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: very nice piece of work, and the team I think,
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: are expecting to observe other relatively nearby planets to look
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: for even colder ones. As you said, I don't suppose
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: it'll hold the record for long.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: No, probably not.
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: You can read that story on NASA spaceflight dot Com
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: if you want to know more about it. While we're
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: talking about Jupiter, though, fred I read a story just
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: in the last few days about the storm the red
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: spot and how it's getting smaller, and when you look
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: back through recent history, it's really shrunk a lot, although
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: it's still big enough for Earth to fit inside barely though.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: But they think they know.
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: Why it's getting smaller. It's running out of stuff to eat.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Apparently they think it fed on smaller storms. But those
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: storms are diminishing as well, so the red spot doesn't
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: have any sustenance and therefore is losing weight.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: Basically interesting, very interesting. This is space Nuts.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Fred Watson. Let's take a
• 16:14
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• 20:00
  Speaker 3: Mir name piece Buds.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Now to a rocky planet that we only rarely talk about,
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: named Mars. This is a really fascinating story, and again,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: like we discussed last week, involves a rover making a discovery.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Last week it was finding sulfur. This week it's finding
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: these these what they've described as leopard spots on rocks
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: on the planet's surface.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: This is the Perseverance rover.
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: What's really interesting about this story is these spots may
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: mean something rather significant.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: So it's a rock that is about probably ninety by
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: sixty centimeters three feet by two feet in the all measure,
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: and it's got a name.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: It's Hook.
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: Pronouncing this correctly, Chow the falls it's named after I believe,
• 21:01
  Speaker 3: a feature in the Grand Canyon. I think that's right.
• 21:04
  Speaker 3: So that rock has all sorts of interesting aspects to it,
• 21:11
  Speaker 3: which is puzzling scientists as to how these various features
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: can exist in one rock because they seem to be
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: you know, some of it suggests that there's a lot
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: of a lot of hot water been involved. With this
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: too hot for anything to live in, and yet we've
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: got these what have been called leopard spots, tiny little
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: white spots which I think have a black ring around them,
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: and they are on Earth the sort of thing that
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: you find when you've got fossilized microbes. They're similar to
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: what we find in rocks where you've got fossilized microbial
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: activity on Earth. So this is why people are very
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: excited about this rock. Is it the first evidence of
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: having been life, living organisms on Mars or is it
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: purely chemical? And apparently the mission scientists who are working
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: on this have kind of analyzed this thing to death.
• 22:15
  Speaker 3: They've used every piece of technology that they've got on
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: the spacecraft. They've zapped it with a laser, they've kind
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: of looked at it with the spectrometers, they've looked at
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: it with their mass spectrometers. They've really done everything to
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: analyze it, and they still don't really have an answer
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: as to whether this is the result of life or not.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: The only way we'll get that answer is by bringing
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: it back, and there is their emissions being planned to
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: bring rocks back to Earth from Mars so we can
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: analyze them with laboratory instruments on Mars. But this is
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: not likely to happen. Well, they're talking about twenty forty now,
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: that return mission been pushed back and pushed back, and
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: I'm not even sure whether the return mission that was
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: being plumbed actually included rocks as big as this one.
• 23:13
  Speaker 3: I think it was more for the you know, the
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: caches of soil that have been collected on Mars and
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: left in little piles on the surface of the planet.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very disappointing to hear that, because we all
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: want to know, We all so very much want to know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: and you know, we're finding telltale signs that life may
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: have existed on Mars when it was a hot or
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: wetter place.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: And how long.
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: That life, if it did exist, survived is another big question. Yeah,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: but pushing it back to twenty forty, I mean, that's
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: that's a gut punch, really, isn't it.
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: It is. My understanding is that NASA. NASA is concerned
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: about how much it costs to do that, and.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: It isn't isn't it The biggest question, well, in all
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: of existence, is whether or not there is life in
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: life beyond. I mean, isn't it worth spending a couple
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: of bucks to find out.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's eleven and a half billion. Is
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: the current Trump.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Change or should I say Trump change? No, it's it's a.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not a lot really easy.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: The what what I was going to say is that
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: as I understand it, NASA is trying to interest the
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: private sector into doing this. So if you can get
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: a company that's prepared to invest a lot of money
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: in a mission like this, that could be you know,
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: certainly would put that company on the map, wouldn't it.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: You know, if you think thinks it's probably yeah, there's
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: probably a couple of companies that could already do it, Yes,
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: and it wouldn't make much of a dint in their value.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: So maybe they should be negotiating.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: I think that maybe what's happening, maybe we'll hear something,
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: you know, all this sort of thing goes on behind
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: the scenes as always.
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, Elon Musk is planning to colonize Mars. Problem solved, Yeah,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: it's truly. He needs to know.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: He needs to know if there's stuff that's already colonized,
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: and that might for the answer to that, yeah.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: Could be.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Now that it is really fascinating story and well worth
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: reading the whole thing.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: But yeah, we've.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Been toying with the idea of life on Mars since
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know the year dot. Yes, and the more
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: we look, the more the evidence stacks up that it
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: probably did exist. We just can't sort of nail that
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: thing down.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: But time will tell.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: And of course it's not the only target in the
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Solar system, that's right.
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: The ice moons are.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: Certainly areas of interest as well. Uh, let's move on
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: to our final story, Fred, And this dates back a
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: couple of years when when you were just a young fella.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: And then it involves a Danish astronomer named tiko' bry.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: He's in the news, but when you consider how long
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: ago he was doing what he was doing, this.
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: Is a bit of a surprise.
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: Well, yes, he's well, he's one of the great names
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: in astronomy. He just very briefly. He grew up in
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: the Danish nobility. In fact, this is really interesting. So
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: I have a whole one of my books had a
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: whole chapter on Tikot and I've been to where he
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: lived and worked many times. So's it's it's been very
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: much part of my you know, my own astronomical journey.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: But he he was stolen from his parents by an
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: uncle and brought up by them. Apparently that was quite
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: common back in the day. But he was a Danish nobleman,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: all set for a career in diplomacy and things like that.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: But he discovered astronomy partly because of a super andover
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: to go sup and over in fifteen seventy six, I
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: think it was got mad keen on astronomy started building instruments.
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: The king at the time, King Frederick the Second. I
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: think it was good King fred He gave him this
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: island in the US, which is the strait between modern
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: day Sweden and Denmark, not very far from Copenhagen, and
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: the island is called Vain. It's now then it was
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Hven in those days because it's part of Sweden now
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: rather than Denmark. But anyway, he built this castle there
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: called Iraniborg, which was fitted with all kinds of astronomical equipment.
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: He basically in the fifteen eighties decided that wasn't good enough.
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: He recognized that this castle with his astronomic instruments, was
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: full of vibrations, so that limited how much he could
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: measure things. So he built an underground observatory called Stiernborg
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: underground in the sense that it was you know, there
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: were crypts which were dug into the soil of vein,
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: and he put his instruments there and had it covering
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: on them to protect the weather. But they were completely
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: open and these weren't telescopes. This was just before the
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: invention of the telescope, so they're all naked eye observations.
• 28:27
  Speaker 3: But he managed to make measurements accurate to about twenty
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: seconds of arc, which were what allowed Johannes Kepler, who
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: was one of his students, to formulate the laws of
• 28:40
  Speaker 3: planetary motion. That took a bry's life in a nutshell.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: But the point is that he also, as many scientists
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: did in those days, tinkered with alchemy, the idea of
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: you know, the elixir of life or forgotten what it
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: was called the philosopher's stone. That was it. That was
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: the philosopher's stone, the thing that will give you eternal
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: life plus turning things into gold, all of that. He
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: tinkered around with that, and unfortunately Tucco's castle was destroyed
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: after his death. In fact, he may even have been
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: before his death, because he left the island of Vain
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: when Frederic's son Christian took over, and Christian didn't like Frederick. Sorry,
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: he didn't like Tiko, so booted him off the island.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: And anyway, the last few years of Tuco's life were
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: not very pleasant. But the locals essentially demolished the castle
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: because he'd been a bit of a tyrant gottening the island,
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: and they took all the stones from the castle to
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: build their own houses, which is kind of what you
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: do if the boss leaves. And so it's only remnants
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: that are found of the castle, but some shards of material,
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: including glass and ceramics, which probably came from Tiko's equipment.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: They were excavated back in the late nineteen eighties and
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: they've been saved, but they've now been analyzed in detail
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: by scientists at the University of Southern Denmark who've produced
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: some very interesting results. And this is using you know,
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: twenty first century analytical techniques, laser ablation and all sorts
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: of things like this to discover what was in these
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: samples of the you know, the containers that Tuco used,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: and it turned out there was nickel copper's inked in
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: antimony tungsten, gold, mercury, and lead on the shards. And
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: these are ones that are very much mainstays of an
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: alchemist's laboratory. And I'm quoting the Cosmos Magazindiot's a lotly
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: way to put it. They are too, the the interesting
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: one that has produced a bit of a puzzles tungsten,
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: that's right. Tungsten wasn't really known at that time, and
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: yet it's found in Tuco's laboratory. And this is you know,
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: what a what an interesting, interesting suggestion. Maybe he was
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: more ahead of his time than we thought he.
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: Was possibly, so, yeah, fascinating. And so they've only just
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: kind of happened across this now they they've now that
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: they've done the analysis, that's right, makes you makes you
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: wonder what he was up to.
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. He was, you know, he was the
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: one person scientific institution, and he brought scientists from all
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: over Europe to work with him. They were, you know,
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: his laboratory assistants and his colleagues. He he was very
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: much into the modern way of doing science. Because he
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: realized he had to publish everything. He ran out of
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: paper for his publication, so I built a paper mill
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: and made paper on the island. Totally entrepreneurial, an extraordinary person.
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: And you know, maybe he was even more extraordinary than
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: we knew before from this recent work.
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pity it sort of came to a
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: grinding hold the way it did, by the sound of things.
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: But he did, he did have a legacy because of
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: his students went on to bigger and better things, and
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: that's probably one of his great achievements that he made.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: He inspired others to do wonderful work.
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: Most notably Kepler with his planet loads of planetary motion.
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: But he was also into what we now called prosthetic surgery.
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: He lost most of his nose in the sword fight
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: when he was nineteen, and he tinkered around with copper
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: and brass to make a false nose, the other silver
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: and gold one on Sundays, you know as well. It
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: was in contact with with people who were doing the
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: same sort of thing. Quite quite amazing, incredible bloke. Yeah,
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: I should make a movie about him, but actually they should,
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: and they may well have done in Denmark, just too possible.
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: Just to clarify, his name was actually Jugo Brauer, that's
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: how it would have been pronounced. But it's latinised TIKOBRAI
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: we pronounce it.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: That, and some people would pronounce his first name Tycho.
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: And it reminds me of the TV series The Expanse,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: which had a space station in it named Tycho's Station.
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: That's where it came from.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: Yep. I always wondered. I didn't look it up.
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: But now I know. Yeah, that is really really great
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: story and if you would like to read it, as
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: Fred mentioned, it's in Cosmos Magazine dot com. One more
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: thing before we finish up, Fred, Those who listen to
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: our podcast could be using any number of platforms, but
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: one of the platforms that's fallen by the wayside is
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: Google Podcasts, and we did have quite a few people
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: that used Google. Google has basically asked all the people
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: who used Google podcast you've probably got an email about it,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: maybe even this week. I got one today saying if
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: you subscribed to podcasts on Google and you can no
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: longer access them, you can still transfer them to YouTube.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: So if you haven't done that yet, you can transfer
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: all your podcasts, including Space Nuts, from Google podcast to
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: the YouTube platform, where I will always remind you to
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. I just
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: wanted to let you know about that.
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: Fred.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: We're done for another day, Thank you, sir, pleasure.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Oh as always always good to talk about these things.
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: Thank you very much, Andrew, not a problem.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: We'll catch you again soon, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large, and.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: Don't forget here in this udeo.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: There you go, I remember it, and from me Andrew Dunkley,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: thanks for your company. Catch you on the very next
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: episode of Space Nuts.
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: See you then bye bye. You'll be listening to the
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts podcast.
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: You can also stream on demand at bites dot com.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.