Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Lava Tubes on Venus, Elon Musk's Lunar Pivot & Titan's Mysterious Origins

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Lava Tubes on Venus, Elon Musk's Lunar Pivot & Titan's Mysterious Origins · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us.
0:01
Speaker 2: This is Space Nuts where we talk astronomy and space science.
0:05
Speaker 2: My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to have your
0:08
Speaker 2: company yet again, and if you're a brand new listener,
0:12
Speaker 2: welcome along. Hope you enjoy it and hope you stick around.
0:15
Speaker 2: On this episode we will be focusing on a whole
0:19
Speaker 2: bunch of different types of stuff. The first one is
0:23
Speaker 2: a new paper that's been released suggesting that there are
0:27
Speaker 2: lava tubes on Venus. How do they know? We can't
0:30
Speaker 2: even see it. Well, they've got some evidence that they
0:33
Speaker 2: think points the finger at Venus's lava tubes. Elon Musk,
0:38
Speaker 2: who has for many years been saying I'm going to
0:41
Speaker 2: send people to Mars and they're going to live there,
0:44
Speaker 2: he's changed his mind. He's got a new target. We'll
0:46
Speaker 2: tell you about that. China has tested a reusable booster,
0:51
Speaker 2: and Saturn's moon Titan might have previously been two moons.
0:56
Speaker 2: We'll talk about all of that on this episode of
0:59
Speaker 2: Space Nuts fifteen seconds.
1:01
Speaker 1: Guidance is in channel ten nine Ignition squnch Space Nuts
1:08
Speaker 1: or three two one Space Nuts, and I reported Bill's
1:15
Speaker 1: good and.
1:16
Speaker 2: Joining us again in his spare time is Professor Fred
1:20
Speaker 2: Watson an astrophrom real large.
1:21
Speaker 1: Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, very good to see you. And
1:25
Speaker 1: I see that the launchers are going well behind your
1:28
Speaker 1: head there.
1:28
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's the photo I took inside the sphere
1:32
Speaker 2: in Las Vegas. We watched a presentation there about a
1:37
Speaker 2: year ago now, and one of the pictures was all
1:41
Speaker 2: these rockets taking off. It looked so nice. I took
1:45
Speaker 2: the photo and there they are on a bunch of them.
1:48
Speaker 2: That's humanity leaving Earth because we've made such a mess
1:51
Speaker 2: of it. They couldn't leave you anymore. That's what that represents.
1:55
Speaker 2: It's yeah, quite a lot. That was a really interesting story,
1:58
Speaker 2: and people people came back to visit Earth as tourists
2:02
Speaker 2: because and they had to wear spacesuits because you couldn't
2:05
Speaker 2: breathe here anymore.
2:07
Speaker 1: That's a really good segue into one of our stories today.
2:09
Speaker 1: So all Dull thought, yes.
2:12
Speaker 2: Well, let's get started, because our very first story involves
2:16
Speaker 2: a planet not unlike Earth at some time in its history,
2:20
Speaker 2: but it's suffering a runaway greenhouse effect and it is
2:24
Speaker 2: now unlivable. But we are trying so hard to learn
2:29
Speaker 2: as much as we can about Venus, and because it's
2:32
Speaker 2: shrouded in cloud and you can't see the surface. We
2:36
Speaker 2: have to use different techniques to see what's going on.
2:40
Speaker 2: And a new paper has just been published suggesting that
2:44
Speaker 2: there are lava tubes on this particular world. This should
2:48
Speaker 2: not come as a surprise because we know it's got
2:50
Speaker 2: so many volcanoes. We don't know if they're still active,
2:54
Speaker 2: but we know it's got It's got more than anywhere else, hasn't.
2:57
Speaker 1: It It does. You're absolutely right. If I remember rightly
3:02
Speaker 1: the numbers two thousand for Earth, it's something like fourteen hundred.
3:07
Speaker 1: I think that's from statistics I wrote down for a
3:10
Speaker 1: book once upon a time. But you're absolutely right. We
3:17
Speaker 1: simply don't know whether any of those two thousand volcanoes
3:20
Speaker 1: are actually still active. You and I have spoken about
3:24
Speaker 1: this before, and there's sort of circumstantial evidence that they
3:27
Speaker 1: might still be activity, or there might have been activity
3:31
Speaker 1: within the last million years, which sounds like a rather
3:34
Speaker 1: large window, except it may well be that, you know,
3:37
Speaker 1: people have thought that these things shut down three and
3:40
Speaker 1: a half billion years ago, So if there's been activity
3:43
Speaker 1: within the last million years, then it's still happening. That's
3:46
Speaker 1: the bottom line. But yeah, so you're quite right. In
3:50
Speaker 1: a body as volcanically not active perhaps, but with a
3:57
Speaker 1: past history of being active, you might expect to find
4:01
Speaker 1: lava tubes. And you and I have both walked through
4:04
Speaker 1: lava tubes in Hawaii and experience what they're like. And
4:09
Speaker 1: my recollection of those is that there are just a
4:12
Speaker 1: few meters in diameter, maybe three or four meters, perhaps five. Well,
4:16
Speaker 1: the news with this lava tube is that it is
4:19
Speaker 1: about a kilometer wide. Whilst really yeah, it's a big one.
4:26
Speaker 1: Where does the evidence come from? Because you're quite right,
4:29
Speaker 1: we cannot directly see the surface of Venus. Although I
4:34
Speaker 1: should give a shout out to my late friend and
4:37
Speaker 1: colleague David Allen, sadly passed away in nineteen ninety four.
4:43
Speaker 1: I think he is at the age of only forty seven.
4:48
Speaker 1: He actually observed for the first time the surface of
4:52
Speaker 1: Venus from a ground based telescope is the Anglo Australian
4:54
Speaker 1: telescope here in New South Wales, and he was using
4:58
Speaker 1: infrared radiation and he found evidence that he could actually
5:02
Speaker 1: penetrate to the surface. Now, there wasn't actually very much
5:04
Speaker 1: to see, and most of what we know about the
5:08
Speaker 1: surface of Venus has come from a spacecraft called Magellan,
5:12
Speaker 1: which was in orbits between nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety
5:17
Speaker 1: two around the planet. Venus is a NASA spacecraft and
5:20
Speaker 1: had something called synthetic aperture radar on board. Collected a
5:25
Speaker 1: huge trove of data on the surface of Venus. It's
5:28
Speaker 1: how we know there are volcanoes there. It's how we
5:30
Speaker 1: know that you know, there are rocky features, lots and
5:35
Speaker 1: lots of different what you might call igneous rock features.
5:39
Speaker 1: Those are the ones that are created by volcanoes. And
5:42
Speaker 1: it's now a re analysis of some of those data
5:46
Speaker 1: by a group at the Remote Sensing Laboratory at the
5:50
Speaker 1: University of Torrento in Italy. They have coordinated the re
5:56
Speaker 1: analysis of the data and basically have looked for evidence
6:02
Speaker 1: of what are called skylights. And a skylight is a
6:05
Speaker 1: hole in the roof of a lava tube. As you'd expect,
6:10
Speaker 1: kind of gives it away, and I'm sure I recall
6:13
Speaker 1: seeing skylights and lava tubes in Hawai as well. But
6:18
Speaker 1: what they've found is evidence not just for a roof collapse,
6:23
Speaker 1: which could be you know, any old cave under the
6:27
Speaker 1: surface whose roof has collapsed, but to show that there
6:32
Speaker 1: is there is a sort of a channel on either
6:37
Speaker 1: side of that collapsed roof. In other words, you know
6:43
Speaker 1: a sub surface cavity that is going backwards and forwards
6:50
Speaker 1: if I can put it that way, as well as
6:52
Speaker 1: just downwards. So what you're talking about is, yes, a
6:55
Speaker 1: lava tube. Lava tubes, as you and irobably both aware,
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Speaker 1: are formed by flowing lava. But what happens is the
7:07
Speaker 1: lava sort of develops a crust as the lava flow
7:12
Speaker 1: is carried on, and that crust of solid lava basically
7:19
Speaker 1: insulates the hot lava that's flowing from its frozen surroundings
7:25
Speaker 1: and so our solidified surroundings, and so you've got the
7:29
Speaker 1: molten rock just keeps on moving, and then eventually when
7:33
Speaker 1: the eruption stops, the lava drains away, and you've got
7:35
Speaker 1: an empty tunnel that finds the lava tube. And so
7:39
Speaker 1: that's what we're talking about here. The roof is thought
7:43
Speaker 1: to be pretty deep. This all comes from these radar
7:46
Speaker 1: measurements at least one hundred and fifty meters thick, and
7:50
Speaker 1: so then you've got an empty void that goes down
7:55
Speaker 1: at least three hundred and seventy five meters And as
8:01
Speaker 1: I said, the width or the estimated diameter of this
8:05
Speaker 1: lava tube is a kilometer. Now that's very very big.
8:13
Speaker 1: And there's a very nice article about this on Space
8:16
Speaker 1: Daily and they say that is at the upper end
8:20
Speaker 1: of what scientists have suggested or observed for similar structures
8:24
Speaker 1: on the Moon and above. The typical size is expected
8:27
Speaker 1: on Earth or Mars. But the research team have commented
8:33
Speaker 1: that this is consistent with Venus having lava channels that
8:37
Speaker 1: are much larger and probably longer than those on the
8:41
Speaker 1: other planets or the other lava rich worlds like the
8:44
Speaker 1: Moon and the planet Mars. So really interesting stuff. Are
8:49
Speaker 1: we going to go and explore one of these? Well,
8:52
Speaker 1: that's a really good question. Given the temperature is what
8:54
Speaker 1: is it for four hundred and fifty celsius or the
8:57
Speaker 1: numas And yeah, there's much cooler in a lava tube.
9:03
Speaker 1: I reckon probably what might drop at least five degrees
9:06
Speaker 1: in the lava tube be virus.
9:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is.
9:10
Speaker 1: There's a suggestion from these researchers, and I think it's
9:13
Speaker 1: based on sort of circumstantial evidence that some of these
9:16
Speaker 1: conduits in the same region as the hall that they've
9:19
Speaker 1: found could run for Well, they suggest at least forty
9:23
Speaker 1: five kilometers, and yeah, that's quite quite remarkable. These are
9:27
Speaker 1: lava tubes, you know, the granddaddies of all lava tube.
9:30
Speaker 2: Yes, well, they're coming out of a volcano called nix Mons,
9:37
Speaker 2: which is a shield volcano like Olympus Mons. It's not
9:41
Speaker 2: as big, but it is rather huge. It's about three
9:45
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty two kilometers a cross is this particular volcano,
9:50
Speaker 2: according to the article I've just found. But nix Mon's
9:54
Speaker 2: named after a Greek goddess apparently.
9:58
Speaker 1: Of darkness, isn't it? Isn't it? I would be, yeah,
10:01
Speaker 1: a mount darkness or something.
10:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I do have a recollection that nix has
10:06
Speaker 2: something to do with the underworld or something to that effect.
10:10
Speaker 2: But yeah, lava tubes on Venus, lava tubes on the Moon,
10:15
Speaker 2: lava tubes on Earth, lava tubes on Mars, they're everywhere.
10:18
Speaker 1: Fred, Well, yes, who gets excited about lava tubes when
10:22
Speaker 1: they're that common. Well, if you're on Venus, because they're
10:25
Speaker 1: so big, and you do.
10:26
Speaker 2: If you're going to sort of create a colony on
10:29
Speaker 2: Mars or even the Moon just to protect them from radiation.
10:33
Speaker 2: So yeah, these things were put there for a reason.
10:36
Speaker 2: See that's what it was.
10:38
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody would say that.
10:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe so, but yeah, great story and also good
10:45
Speaker 2: to see that some of that old dart at dating
10:47
Speaker 2: back over thirty years has been reanalyzed and we've been
10:52
Speaker 2: able to learn more from it. I'm loving that that's
10:55
Speaker 2: happening more and more these days. If you want to
10:58
Speaker 2: read about it, as Fred said, it's on Space Daily
11:00
Speaker 2: dot com, or you can read the paper proper from
11:03
Speaker 2: start to finish. It's only about five thousand pages at
11:06
Speaker 2: Nature Communications. Now, Fred, we talked about Mars, we might
11:11
Speaker 2: as well go straight to that planet because in the
11:15
Speaker 2: past we have talked about plans by a certain Elon
11:19
Speaker 2: Musk to send people to Mars and colonize.
11:24
Speaker 1: Now.
11:25
Speaker 2: I know how you feel about colonization of anything beyond Earth,
11:29
Speaker 2: but it looks like he's decided probably not time to
11:34
Speaker 2: consider that. Let's bite off something we can.
11:37
Speaker 1: Chew exactly, and not before time. So you know, Elon's
11:45
Speaker 1: Mars aspirations go back twenty years or more, I think,
11:49
Speaker 1: to write, to the beginning of SpaceX, and of course
11:52
Speaker 1: his main reason for developing the starship was to be
11:55
Speaker 1: able to transport large numbers of people to the planet Mars.
12:00
Speaker 1: And so he has successfully developed Starship and it is
12:04
Speaker 1: still under test where I think we're on test number
12:09
Speaker 1: eighteen's coming up, if I remember rightly, of the whole
12:12
Speaker 1: Starship package with the Falcon Super super Heavy and the
12:18
Speaker 1: Starship itself which is the upper stage. But that so
12:24
Speaker 1: that's it's not quite ready, but it's certainly getting there.
12:28
Speaker 1: But the penny has finally dropped. That is a lot
12:31
Speaker 1: harder to go to Mars than it is to the
12:33
Speaker 1: Moon exactly. And he has a deal with NASA. He's
12:37
Speaker 1: one of the two companies that is competing for the
12:41
Speaker 1: rights to land or to be the landing vehicle on
12:45
Speaker 1: the Moon for the Artemis three and beyond, in other words,
12:50
Speaker 1: the lunar program. The other company is Blue Origin with
12:54
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos. They've got a lunar lander that looks a
12:58
Speaker 1: lot more sensible in any waste, and Starship Starship is
13:02
Speaker 1: a huge thing to land it on the Moon. If
13:04
Speaker 1: you get things wrong, you've got a big disaster on
13:06
Speaker 1: your hands. Anyway, that I think is what has focused
13:11
Speaker 1: Elon again on the Moon rather than Mars. Plus the
13:15
Speaker 1: fact that as he's pointed out, and he's sent out
13:20
Speaker 1: a text on this or a blog or social media thing, oh,
13:27
Speaker 1: which said we've just headed on X. It might have
13:31
Speaker 1: been X. Yes, it's funny you should say that anyway.
13:34
Speaker 1: He's suggesting that one of the reasons is that you
13:37
Speaker 1: can you can go to the Moon every ten days,
13:40
Speaker 1: you can only go to Mars every twenty six months.
13:45
Speaker 1: Plus you've got a six month journey there, whereas you
13:47
Speaker 1: can probably do it in three or four days for
13:49
Speaker 1: the Moon, And in some senses it gives you the
13:54
Speaker 1: same outcome. For the main reason that Elon wont to
14:00
Speaker 1: go to Mars, which was to provide a lifeboat for
14:03
Speaker 1: the inhabitants of planet Earth. Elon decided a long time ago,
14:09
Speaker 1: like the spacecraft behind you at the moment, that the
14:12
Speaker 1: Earth was doomed and that we needed somewhere else to
14:17
Speaker 1: go to ensure the survival of Homo sapiens. In many
14:22
Speaker 1: ways is a loadable aspiration. But then his next thought
14:28
Speaker 1: was going and trampling all over Mars. But I think
14:32
Speaker 1: just that, I mean, you and I have been talking
14:35
Speaker 1: about this for a long time, how difficult it is
14:37
Speaker 1: going to be to put humans on Mars, just because
14:41
Speaker 1: of the journey there at least six months. You can't
14:45
Speaker 1: come back until you've waited another six months or so
14:48
Speaker 1: until the Moon and sorry, the Earth and Mars are
14:50
Speaker 1: in the right position relative to one another, and then
14:53
Speaker 1: you've got a six month journey back. It's just such
14:56
Speaker 1: a difficult venture to imagine. Plus you've got a pretty
15:01
Speaker 1: hostile environment when you're there. The moon's hostile too, but
15:04
Speaker 1: it's a lot nearer, and you know, in an emergency,
15:07
Speaker 1: as we know from Apollo thirteen, you can get your
15:10
Speaker 1: astronauts back. Yes, so it's that's the It's like an epiphany,
15:15
Speaker 1: which I'm delighted to see, to be honest, Yeah, I'm
15:19
Speaker 1: into reality.
15:20
Speaker 2: I think it's a logical decision. The day will come
15:23
Speaker 2: when we do send people to Mars. But I think that's.
15:26
Speaker 1: True, that's right. It's a lot further off.
15:29
Speaker 2: Than Elon was hoping, and he's already passed a couple
15:32
Speaker 2: of the deadlights, so.
15:34
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, indeed, yes, it was going to be twenty
15:37
Speaker 1: twenty four when I started talking about this in twenty sixteen.
15:40
Speaker 2: Yes, and I think most people thought then that was
15:44
Speaker 2: probably you know, shooting too high or too.
15:48
Speaker 1: Do you remember Mars one the guy who conned everybody
15:53
Speaker 1: into training for a one way journey to Mars, which
15:56
Speaker 1: was going to use SpaceX vehicles. Elon was kind of
16:01
Speaker 1: in on that.
16:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, one day it will happen. Yes, I think
16:09
Speaker 2: we've got to get it all sorted out for the
16:11
Speaker 2: Moon first and exactly then we can springboard to Mars
16:16
Speaker 2: and who knows where beyond that. But you know, it's
16:20
Speaker 2: going to take time, and you've got to have the
16:22
Speaker 2: right equipment, and I don't think we've really got the
16:25
Speaker 2: gear to do a journey to Mars yet. There's so
16:30
Speaker 2: much about the human body you've got to take into account,
16:34
Speaker 2: not just the life support, but you've got to consider
16:36
Speaker 2: that you know, they're going to be up there for
16:39
Speaker 2: at least what eighteen months something like that.
16:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a long time, going to be away for
16:47
Speaker 1: at least eight months.
16:49
Speaker 2: So your body is going to be affected by that,
16:51
Speaker 2: because the gravity that you enjoy and take for granted
16:55
Speaker 2: on Earth that keeps your body the way it is
16:58
Speaker 2: won't be there. All these things. Once they've perfected artificial
17:06
Speaker 2: gravity in space, then we might start seeing movement towards Mars. Yeah,
17:12
Speaker 2: we're not there yet. You can read that story at
17:15
Speaker 2: spacedaily dot com. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley
17:20
Speaker 2: and Professor Fred Watson. Let's take a little break from
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Speaker 2: space nuts. We have been Anguality. They've here the lab
19:36
Speaker 2: space Nuts. The next story brings us back to the
19:40
Speaker 2: space race, and of course we've been talking with much
19:43
Speaker 2: excitement about the prospect of Artemis two taking astronauts around
19:50
Speaker 2: the Moon, four of them, and bringing them back safely
19:53
Speaker 2: to Earth. They won't be landing or walking around on
19:55
Speaker 2: the surface in this case, but they are delayed, but
20:00
Speaker 2: getting closer to a lift off, we hope. In the meantime,
20:05
Speaker 2: there is another space agency that is very very keen
20:08
Speaker 2: to put people on the Moon, and that's the China
20:13
Speaker 2: Space Agency, the China Manned Space Agency, and they have
20:17
Speaker 2: just tested their own version of a reusable booster.
20:22
Speaker 1: Indeed they have in fact, they've done a double test Andrew,
20:26
Speaker 1: so they've already demonstrated that I think it's their long
20:30
Speaker 1: March ten rocket can be returned safely back to Earth.
20:36
Speaker 1: So the idea of reusable boosters goes back once again
20:41
Speaker 1: to Elon in twenty fifteen when the first Falcon returned
20:46
Speaker 1: safely to Earth to be reused. And now that's the
20:50
Speaker 1: normal way they do it, and so it will be
20:53
Speaker 1: the same with the Starship super Heavy booster. So it's
20:59
Speaker 1: a sort of one company has basically nailed it, but
21:04
Speaker 1: another number of other companies are doing the same or
21:08
Speaker 1: attempting the same thing. Blue Origin is one of them,
21:10
Speaker 1: Jeff Bezos's company. They've had a success as well. And
21:14
Speaker 1: the China Manned Space Agency has also tested reusable boosters
21:20
Speaker 1: and the latest test is a kind of double test,
21:25
Speaker 1: because not only have they tested the reusable booster. They
21:29
Speaker 1: have tested their new spacecraft, which is the one intended
21:35
Speaker 1: to take Taycher notes to the Moon. It's called Meng Jiao.
21:40
Speaker 1: If I remember rightly, that means something dream. I think.
21:44
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the exact translation is, but it's
21:47
Speaker 1: a lovely name. So Meng Jiao is the spacecraft that
21:52
Speaker 1: will take astronauts from Earth probably to lunar orbit, but
22:00
Speaker 1: then there'll be a separate landing vehicle, so they'll transfer
22:03
Speaker 1: to a lander which will take them down to the surface.
22:06
Speaker 1: That's a bit like the architecture that's been planned for
22:09
Speaker 1: Artemis three as far as I'm aware of, certainly ones
22:14
Speaker 1: beyond that that you're talking about having a separate lander
22:18
Speaker 1: in orbit around the Moon. So that's the test. But
22:22
Speaker 1: there's another element of this that was tested in this
22:25
Speaker 1: new demonstration, and that is the Meng spacecraft. Like most
22:29
Speaker 1: of the Crewde capsules that we see going into orbits,
22:33
Speaker 1: and certainly the Apollo capsule does this, as does the
22:37
Speaker 1: SpaceX Dragon capsule Crew Dragon. That is the launch abort system,
22:43
Speaker 1: in other words, the way of getting the capsule off
22:46
Speaker 1: the top of the rocket if something goes wrong and
22:50
Speaker 1: they demonstrated that by getting the Mengjao capsule to leave
22:57
Speaker 1: the long Long March ten rocket a fairly early stage
23:03
Speaker 1: in the flight, and it was just about the time
23:07
Speaker 1: of what we call max Q, where you've got maximum
23:10
Speaker 1: aerodynamic pressure on the vehicle. The abort motors that are
23:16
Speaker 1: fitted in the ME spacecraft pulled it away from the
23:19
Speaker 1: booster exactly as you would do if you were trying
23:22
Speaker 1: to escape from something dangerous going on with your booster rocket.
23:28
Speaker 1: And it all worked very very successfully, very interesting to read.
23:34
Speaker 1: I think the China Man Space Agency, their program is
23:40
Speaker 1: well on track. They have all along said they want
23:44
Speaker 1: to have Tiger notes on the Moon by twenty thirty,
23:49
Speaker 1: and it looks as though though well on the way
23:50
Speaker 1: to doing that. Here we are in twenty twenty six.
23:53
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing some impressive things, and they have become
23:57
Speaker 2: probably the Asia player next to the United States in
24:02
Speaker 2: space exploration. Russia seems to have fallen a little behind,
24:07
Speaker 2: but they've got their attention focused elsewhere at the moment.
24:10
Speaker 2: But I think it's good. It's healthy competition, and I
24:18
Speaker 2: think having a new race to the Moon situation is
24:22
Speaker 2: very exciting and I can't wait to see how it
24:25
Speaker 2: all pans out. And I did look up the translation
24:29
Speaker 2: for mengju or mengzhoo, and it's dream vessel or dream
24:34
Speaker 2: boat if you like. You could go either way. But yeah,
24:40
Speaker 2: they've come a long way since releasing the motor vehicle
24:42
Speaker 2: known as the Cherry, which didn't graze in Australia. But
24:49
Speaker 2: they're doing wonderful things now. In fact, I think it's
24:53
Speaker 2: a Chinese car company that owns MG now and as
24:57
Speaker 2: producing new models of the MG motor car, which is
25:01
Speaker 2: readily available in Australia, and they're selling a lot of them.
25:05
Speaker 2: They're quite a popular vehicle in this country. I don't
25:08
Speaker 2: know how they're going elsewhere. And of course they've got
25:12
Speaker 2: the Build Your Dreams electric vehicle that's making inroads around
25:17
Speaker 2: the world, and I first saw them when we're in
25:19
Speaker 2: China a couple of years ago. They're doing amazing things
25:23
Speaker 2: technologically on Earth and in space, and I look forward
25:28
Speaker 2: to seeing how far they take it. They might get
25:30
Speaker 2: the Mars before anyone else. Fred.
25:32
Speaker 1: Maybe that's not impossible, No, not at all. It's a
25:37
Speaker 1: program to be a blow. It's certainly going well.
25:41
Speaker 2: Okay, you can read all about that test run of
25:46
Speaker 2: the men's uice spacecraft and the reusable booster at ArsTechnica
25:50
Speaker 2: dot com. Let's take a break from the show to
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27:33
Speaker 1: I think we need to do a little more weather crafting.
27:37
Speaker 2: Space nuts. One last story, Fred, and this one takes
27:42
Speaker 2: us into some of the outer reaches of our Solar system,
27:46
Speaker 2: or at least getting on your way there. Saturn's moon Titan. Now,
27:50
Speaker 2: we've talked about Titan multiple times over the last several
27:55
Speaker 2: years for one reason or another. Now they have suggested
28:01
Speaker 2: that Titan might have previously been two moons or maybe more,
28:05
Speaker 2: and there was some kind of event that brought it
28:08
Speaker 2: all together.
28:10
Speaker 1: That's right, and so what sort of prompted this is
28:18
Speaker 1: the idea that Titan's orbit has evolved, and it's basically,
28:31
Speaker 1: you know, the gravitational pull of Saturn that stabilizes the orbit.
28:37
Speaker 1: You'd expect an orbit eventually to become more or less circular,
28:40
Speaker 1: but Titans isn't. And so what people have looked at is, Okay,
28:50
Speaker 1: what happens if we sort of replay the thing backwards
28:55
Speaker 1: to look at what that orbit might have looked like
28:58
Speaker 1: maybe one hundred million years ago, and it's that's one
29:05
Speaker 1: hundred million years. It looks as though something did happen.
29:09
Speaker 1: There is the idea of a collision between something that
29:17
Speaker 1: was large and something that was small, and the remnants
29:21
Speaker 1: of that collision still exists today. One is Titan, the
29:25
Speaker 1: other is Hyperion, which is a very famous potato shaped moon,
29:30
Speaker 1: very odd shape, which is also in an elongated or
29:36
Speaker 1: an eccentric orbit. But so what you do is you
29:40
Speaker 1: replay their orbits back and you find that there might
29:42
Speaker 1: have been some sort of interaction about one hundred million
29:46
Speaker 1: years ago. But of course that one hundred million years
29:50
Speaker 1: rings a bell with anybody interested in Saturn, because that's
29:53
Speaker 1: how old we think the rings are. And so the
29:56
Speaker 1: suggestion is that there were two of these moons that collided,
30:00
Speaker 1: big one and a small one, and the debris, some
30:04
Speaker 1: of it would have enhanced the size of Titan, some
30:06
Speaker 1: of it would have enhanced the size probably of Hyperion,
30:10
Speaker 1: and some of it would have created the ring system.
30:13
Speaker 1: And that's the really rather neat and tidy story that
30:17
Speaker 1: is coming out of this piece of research, which comes
30:22
Speaker 1: actually from the SETI Institute the kind of intelligence. There's
30:30
Speaker 1: still a pretty active group of scientists at SETI.
30:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, well that's good. It's good that they sort of
30:40
Speaker 2: not just focused on the one thing. They're working on
30:44
Speaker 2: other things that are happening in space science. Titan is
30:49
Speaker 2: an interesting world. I think it's the second largest moon
30:52
Speaker 2: in the Solar System, or the second that it is,
30:55
Speaker 2: that's correct, and it's got an atmosphere, so whatever happened
30:59
Speaker 2: to it certainly created an interesting situation.
31:05
Speaker 1: That's right. Sorry, I've lost you on my screens. I've
31:09
Speaker 1: just found you again. That's why it's preoccupied. Not only
31:12
Speaker 1: is it the second biggest moon in the Solar System,
31:16
Speaker 1: it's actually bigger than Mercury. And it's a very large
31:19
Speaker 1: object and of great interest with you know, the Dragonfly
31:24
Speaker 1: mission being planned to fly through the atmosphere and not
31:27
Speaker 1: to copter that will fly through the atmosphere of Titan
31:30
Speaker 1: and send us back, hopefully pictures of the ethane and
31:33
Speaker 1: methane lakes on Titan's icy surface. Titan is just solid ice,
31:38
Speaker 1: So yeah, an interesting insight into the history of Titan,
31:41
Speaker 1: and also just sort of adds to the intrigue when
31:44
Speaker 1: we go and we finally do go and have a
31:47
Speaker 1: close look at Titan.
31:48
Speaker 2: Yes indeed, Yeah, fascinating world and another one that would
31:52
Speaker 2: not really be good for humans to wander around.
31:55
Speaker 1: That's right.
31:57
Speaker 2: We're surrounded by all of then, aren't we.
31:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is not really a coincidence, is it? Because
32:03
Speaker 1: the only place we can live is the where we
32:05
Speaker 1: evolved on. So indeed.
32:09
Speaker 2: It's a great story. Who to funk at two moons
32:12
Speaker 2: that created one and that is what we call Titan.
32:16
Speaker 2: If you'd like to read up on that, it's on
32:19
Speaker 2: the fizz dot org website phys or you can read
32:24
Speaker 2: the paper in the Planetary Science Journal. And we are done, fret.
32:29
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. That's sir. Isn't that episode six
32:33
Speaker 1: hundred and one that is finished? Y?
32:36
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, wow, but time for last when you're having fun.
32:41
Speaker 1: Certainly does. Thank you, Andrew. It's always great to chat.
32:44
Speaker 2: We'll catch you soon on the next episode, which will
32:47
Speaker 2: be a Q and A episode coming up soon. And
32:50
Speaker 2: don't forget the visit us online in the meantime. You
32:52
Speaker 2: can do that at space Nuts podcast dot com or
32:55
Speaker 2: space nuts dot io. You can visit our social media pages,
32:58
Speaker 2: the official Space's Facebook page or the Instagram site or
33:04
Speaker 2: you can go to the user generated Facebook page which
33:08
Speaker 2: is the Space Nuts podcast group, which is growing in number.
33:12
Speaker 2: Let me have a look. Twenty seven hundred plus members
33:15
Speaker 2: in that Facebook group at the moment and they all
33:19
Speaker 2: chat to each other and tell terrible jokes. So check
33:22
Speaker 2: it out. And thanks to Hugh in the studio. Hugh
33:26
Speaker 2: couldn't be with us today because he was out last
33:29
Speaker 2: Saturday night and something about two moons anyway got arrested
33:33
Speaker 2: and from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. Get
33:40
Speaker 2: you on the next episode of Space Nuts. By by
33:43
Speaker 2: you'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at
33:48
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
33:54
Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
33:57
Speaker 2: This has been another quality podcast production from The Nights
34:01
Speaker 2: dot Com