Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Meteorite Doorbells, Space Treaties & Panspermia Possibilities: #489 - The Great Cosmic Debate

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Meteorite Doorbells, Space Treaties & Panspermia Possibilities: #489 - The Great Cosmic Debate · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: once again. My name is Andrew Dunkley. It's great to
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: have your company. We have got a lot On this
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: particular episode. We're going to talk about something that was
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: said during the inauguration speech of one Donald Trump. We're
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: going to listen to a meteorite striking somebody's front door
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: in Canada or close enough. And we're going to look
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: at a couple of space launchers, one that had a
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: bit of a disassembly and one of them that was
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: successful or there was a bit of an issue with
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: sticking the landing on that one as well. Pan sperm
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: is in the news again, and if we can fit
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: anything else in, we will. That's all coming up on
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: this edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine Ignition
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts or three two Space Nuts An bought Neil's good.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Yes indeed, and it is good to welcome again. Johnty Horner,
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: professor of astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, sitting
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: in for Fred who's gallivanting around the Northern Hemisphere somewhere
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: up in the deep cold looking at stuff. Johnty, Hello, Hello.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: And yeah, I'm continuing to be the substitute Yocraman this week.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: So that's yes, it's good to be here. It's great
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: to have you doing a fabulous job. And yeah, we're
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: really really.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Pleased to have you.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I wanted to start this week with the inauguration speech
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: of one Donald Trump, who had select guests in his audience.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: They had to actually move it for the first time
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: in forty years because it was so bitterly cold, and
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: so there was a limited audience.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: One might who was all talking about people being snowflake
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: snament tracked possible.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And there's been a lot of reporting on some of
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the things that Donald Trump said in his opening speech
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: in his inauguration speech, and one of them was, we
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: will pursue our manifest destiny to plant the stars and
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: stripes on planet Mars. Now this sort of follows on
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: from his desire to increase US territory. Now, isn't there
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: some kind of space treaty that bans us owning anything
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: off planet?
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: There is this Cis Space Treaty buck in nineteen sixty seven,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: and it's an interesting one of how the world has
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: changed because back then the only people really involved in
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: doing anything in space were a few select Messro States
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: who were doing a lot of things as a way
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: of proving that they were bigger and stronger than their
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: rivals as much as anything else, but this was a
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: un declaration that the US is a signaturiteur. And one
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: of the many things covered in the Space Act, it's
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: the fact that there is no ownership of things off
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the Earth, the idea that things should be for everybody
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: rather than for select states, and that's never really been
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: challenged because we've never had the wherewithal to occupy and
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: take over things in space. We can land there, we
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: can drive stuff around, but it's like the moon. You know,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: the US can land on the Moon, but there's no
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: way they can stop China landing or over on the moon.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: They can't claim things and protect them in any way. Now,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: there's two sides to this Donald Trump thing. On the
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: one hand, fabulous that to some degree that support there
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: for space exploration going forward. And it does seem like
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: it's been an ongoing tennis match for sixty years of
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: one side saying we'll go to the Moon, then four
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: years later the other side saying, nah, we'll scrap going
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: to the Moon. We'll go to Mars and back and forth.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: So it's really positive seeing some continued engagement with outside
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: of space stuff. On the flip side, the language is
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: a little concerning. So I mean, you know, you get there,
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: you put the flag in to say we got here.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: That's one thing. If you're putting the flag in as
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: a point of ownership, then that's an entirely different thing.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: And it'll be very interesting to see what that sparks
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: in terms of reaction from China, for example, who also
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: have aspirations to go to Mars, and whether any of
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: this is enforceable. Now there's been a lot of discussion
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: about the Space Treaty anyway, and the context of the
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: commercial use of space, because, like I said, when it
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: was put together, very few nations were involved in space,
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: and it was a nation thing, and now it's a
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: commercial thing. A great bulk of launchers to space and
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: no longer research missions launched by governments. They're commercial initiatives
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: launched by companies, and that's a very different way of
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: doing things, and legislation just hasn't kept up. You know.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of discussions about the likes of Stylink
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: and the proposed that Amazon Mega Constellation and many many others,
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: and what the legality of that is and should we
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: be doing it all and how do people have a
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: right to control what is put in the sky above them?
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: And none of that's really covered because the legislation hasn't
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: kept up, So it's very much like the Wild West,
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: and this is just you had another reflection of that
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: in terms of it's all well and good having a
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: treaty that is more than sixty years old that says
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: you can't on things in space, we can't build a
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: presence there. But the reality is if they go there
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: and put the flag in and say this is Amas now,
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: and they have the wherewithal to defend that claim, which
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: is another thing entirely, who's going to stop them?
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, yes, that's the sixty four thousand dollars question.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: And his richest supporter wants to put a colony on Mars.
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: So there's every.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Change that they've had a bit of a chat about
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: this pre direction speech too.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Well. I remember many years ago el On the Great,
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: what a wonderful character. I have opinions there which I
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: probably shouldn't begin too much, but he said that he
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: has this great aspiration that he should be the first
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: person to die on Mars, and I think if you
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: talked to a lot of astronomers there's some interesting thoughts
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: on whether that would be a good thing or not.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Yes, and yes, there were a few other things that
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the inauguration speech and the after party, if we can
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: call it that, that we're not going to go into
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: involving Elon, but he got plenty of coverage on that
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: in the news as well.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it's a.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Really dicey one and one wonders what will happen going forward.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: You mentioned China.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: They were invited to the inauguration. I think the vice
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: president or the Vice Premiere or whatever the title is
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: for China did go. So maybe that's a good sign
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: that relations between the two countries might be warming up
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: a bit. But we'll have to wait and see. It's
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: early days, but the next four years will be fascinating,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: to say the least. Yes, indeed, let's move on to
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: something as interesting but completely different, and this is where
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: household technology has become such an amazing thing. I remember
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: when I first got a camera at my front door
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: at a house we used to live in. It actually
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: recorded a lightning strike, which was amazing. Over in Canada,
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: the other day, a meteorite strike was recorded by a
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: door cam and they not only got a vision of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: the thing hitting the porch, they got the audio and
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: it sounded something like this. That's a quite a record.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I think I've got it again. There we go.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating, Johnny, isn't it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's just so awesome. I mean, one of the
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: first things I thought about on this when I saw
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: the photos and the footage was hang on, this is Canada,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: which is notoriously cold and snowy, and all the footage
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: is green and verdant. Turns out that this event actually
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: happened in July last year, but we're only now getting
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: to hear about it because there's been an official naming
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: of this meteorite after the town that it landed in.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: So see the Charlottetown meteor right now. And that's why
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: this has finally come out as a story. So it's
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: one of these interesting things with stories like this that
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: you don't often hear about the news when it's new.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: Some of you have about it when something triggers that release.
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: But it's absolutely fabulous. So there's actually a photograph I've
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: got upon my other screen at the minute showing where
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: this meteorite hit, and it's hit on the Redstone driveway essentially,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: which is why you hear that smashing shattering sound because
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  Speaker 2: this was a chondritic type meteorite, so it was quite fragile, friable,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: and so when it hit the ground, and it hit
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: the ground traveling at what you describe as terminal velossity,
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: so it wasn't coming in at klomid as a second
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: at this point, it's coming in a couple of hundred
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: miles an hour because that's the atmosphere had slowed it
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: down essentially, so it landed essentially like if you'd dropped
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: a rock from an aircraft or dropped a rock from
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  Speaker 2: a couple of hundred meters up hit the ground. The
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: ground was hard when this thing shattered, so the noise
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: you're hearing it's the initial impact and then all the
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: bits scattering around. This was a single impact, and you
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: see this beautiful spray distribution on the driveway on this
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: photograph that looks very much like a ray greater on
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: the moon. Very similar but also very reminiscent of a
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: similar fact that happened in the UK just a couple
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  Speaker 2: of years ago. That was also a chondrite that hit
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: somebody's driveway, and they did a really good job of
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: collecting it. So it's really nice to see the similarities.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: And just looking at that debris and the scatter pattern,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: you can tell that this isn't an iron meteorite, that
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: it was something quite light and fragile even before the
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: bits got Analyze the fact that on the video feed
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: from this, you know, doorbell camera, you see a freeze
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: frame and you can actually see the rock if it's
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: coming in because the frame rate was high enough that
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: the frame before the impact happened, there's this black speck
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: in front of the sky that is a rock just
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: before impact, and that has to be unique. I don't
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: think there's ever been any record like that of an
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: impact as it happened. When it happened from close up.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: We saw commed Schumachalevin nine hit Jupiter, but even then
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: the impacts were around the back of that planet. We've
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: seen a few impacts on Jupiter's face since, but that's
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: seen event at six hundred million kilometers separation is very different.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: Seeing a doorbell camera showing a rock six foot of
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: the ground that is about to hit that is a
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: part of a celestial object. That's just awesome. It is awesome.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: They collected some fragments and that sort of prompted you
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: to think about how this should or shouldn't be done.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's some really good and really bad examples of
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: what to do if you think you found a meteorite.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And this aside nineteen nine point nine percent at the
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: time when people think they've found a meteorite on the ground,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: they haven't. But a common thing people do is touch
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: what they've found to a magnet because iron meteorites will
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: be trapped to the magnet. This is really bad. So
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: everybody I know who works in meteorites studies strongly, strongly,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: strongly says, please, please, please do not bring magnets anywhere
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: near them because one of the cool things about meteorites
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: is they preserve the history of the LSL system. One
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: of the things locked in them is any evidence of
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: weak magnetic feels back then. And if you bring a
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: magnet now, but you wipe all that history a hard drive. Absolutely, Yeah,
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: it's a bit a little bit sad. The other thing
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: I've seeing that a couple of people have done that
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: is really fabulous is if you get there very quickly.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: When something's fall and it's not going to be steaming hot,
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: boiling hot like you see in the movies. It'll actually
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: probably be clap cold and water will be condensing on it.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: But if you want to pick it up. One of
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: the things about freshly fallen meteorites that's exciting is they
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: are preserving evidence of another celestial body, and people are
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: interested in things like possible precursor compounds to life. Could
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: there have been life there or proto life or things
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: like that, Where does it have come from? Now, if
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: you go and grab it with your sweaty human hand
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: covered with oils and all the rest of it, you
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: contaminate it. Now, I've got a couple of dogs. One
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: of them is asleep here, and when we take them
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: for their walk, they sometimes decide to do their business.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: And we've got very skilled at getting these little plastic
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: bags and putting the bag over our hand, and then
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: picking the unmentionables and putting the bag over it so
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: that there's no contact between human flesh and that which
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: you wish to not touch in this case, and the
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: same kind of thing would work for meteorites. So if
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: you found if you observe this happened on your ring,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: door bell or other products are available. You know, see
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: this happen, don't go pick it up with your hand.
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: If you can bag it as if it's seriously and
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: then if you can store it in the freezer. So
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: there's a fabulous story of a meteorite that fell in
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: Canada again, that fell on a frozen lake in the
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: middle of winter and was recovered and they actually managed
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: to bag it and store it in the freezer. And
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: the people who did that, the scientists are thrilled with
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: them because it turned out that that meteorite was incredibly
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: rare in that it is pretty much the only one
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: we found with volatile materials still in it, and if
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: it had fallen somewhere where it was above freezing, that
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: would have just melted and dribbled out of it. But
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: what it saught is that that may well have actually
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: been more cometary material than asteroidal material. And all the
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: things that we were able to learn from it were
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: ensured by the fact that the people found it a
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: it was preserved. It fell somewhere really cutl so it's
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: stared Christine. But then when it was collected, they bugging
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: it up the right way. They put it in the
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: free room, they stared it. Now a lot to remember.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: And the odds are nobody listening to this will ever
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: have the good fortune of having a meetea Rutland on
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: the driveway. But if you ever do, it's good to
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: do the right thing because makes something that's already very
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: valuable even more precious to scientists. And yeah, that's good advice.
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: And some more advice if you do, you know, practice
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: what you preach and pick up the dog poo. Don't
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: put it in the freezer next to the sausages, so
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: don't mix it up with the media rite fragments, because
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: you know that could be very to that. Yeah, but
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: a great story and quite amazing footage. If you haven't
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: seen it, jump online and have a look for the
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I think it was a ring camera that they were using.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: It was m Okay, this.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Is space Nuts Andrew Duncle here with Joddy Horner. Let's
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: take a little break from the show right now to
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  Speaker 2: Space nuts.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Next story Johnty involves space X and this was a
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: test flight of one of the mega rockets, the Starship,
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: and well things went well and not well. I think
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: they got the big bit back with the chopsticks, but
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: the other bit.
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: Well, it created quite a large show. Absolutely, And this
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: came very quickly to my attention when I got up
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: that morning and looked on various platforms, and there's the
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: most astonishingly beautiful footage taken over the Turken Care Coss
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Islands of what's clearly space Hunk. So it's coming in
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: much too slowly to be a meteorite or something from
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: beyond the symmedia environment. They come in much much quicker.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: You've got this beautiful shower of sparks moving slowly across
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: the sky. Slowly is a relative term, slowly compared to
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: when you've seen Metea showers and viaballs, fast compared to
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: a helicopter and aircraft high up, but incredibly multicolored, incredibly bright,
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: visible during the daytime. And it was very quickly make
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: clear that this was the remnants of the upper stage
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: of the Starship test launch. So the launches rocket that
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: is one hundred and twenty three meters tall, which should
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: boggles my mind to begin with. Yes, after the first
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: stage separated, the lower stage, which is a bigger bit,
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: successfully came back and landed, which is an incredible achievement.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: They captured it, landed safely, ready to reuse again. But
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: about eight and a half minutes into the flight, the
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: upper stage encountered a problem and self destructed. It's what
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: spacects have coined, a rapid unscheduled disassembly, which I think
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: is kind of whimsical, but that's lovely, and it was
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: exploded deliberately. When something goes wrong, you don't want it
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: going out of control, so things are terminated. And then
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: it fell back to through the atmosphere and a blatd
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: burned up high in the sky, putting on a spectacular show.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Now a lot of people go, oh, no, things have
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: blown up. That's terrible, and SpaceX are fairly positive about it,
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: because I guess with spaceflight, the argument is, you don't
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: make an omelet without breaking eggs. The entire history of
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: spaceflight is success built on failure, and when something fails,
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: that's actually a real success in its own right because
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: it allows you to identify something that could go wrong
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: and fix it so that it never goes wrong again.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: So this kind of thing has been a standard part
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: of SpaceX's history, and their great success is that they
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: accept these things and build on them. They did have
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: some interesting kind of side effects. So I saw an
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: interesting thread on Reddit from a pilot who had been
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: in the air when this happened, and they'd had to
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: divert because obviously that strewn field where this is coming
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: down has to become closed air space for I think
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: he said the rules and regulations were thirty minutes after
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: it finishes, in order to be just in case, just
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: to be safe, because the odds of one of these
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: fragments hitting an aircraft are vanishingly small, but they're a
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: lot higher than if there's not one of these events happening.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: So it's a safety thing, and it turns out that
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: aircraft only have a relatively small margin a fuel error,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: so a couple of the planes involved had to declare
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: what they call a fuel emergency, which is as bad
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: as it sounds. I found this really fascinating reading through it.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: He was very detailed in it. A fuel emergency is
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: not saying, oh my god, we're doomed. It's saying, when
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: I want to our backup fuel, so you need to
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: bump us up the landing schedule. So it's not panic panic,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: it's more give us a priority landing. But it's still
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: really interesting that you don't necessarily connect immediately spacextween a
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: rocket launch and somebody on an aircraft having to divert
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: or having to be delayed because a rocket launch went wrong.
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: And at the minute, we have more rocket launches happening
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: per week, per day than there has ever been before,
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: and that's only going to get more and more common
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: as the commercially space gets even more common. So this
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: kind of suffs an interesting insight into how all this
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: stuff plays together, as well as putting on an incredibly
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: spe tacular leisure. I mean, the footage is well working
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: out and looking for success dunning it is. It's quite extraordinary.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: I had to laugh though, because the SpaceX has this
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: this habit of stating the bleedingly obvious. So starship is
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: a starship, and the upper stage that actually they had
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: to destroy is called ship. Yes, okay, all right, well,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I mean that's what it is. It's a spaceship, so
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: they just called it ship.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Gosh.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I guess it doesn't really matter what you call anything.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: But people look back in the future the history of
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: these pioneering events and go ah, they really didn't put
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: much thought into that.
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: They've actually done quite a good job about getting people
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: on board and actually giving things whimsical names, you know,
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: things that are stick in the mind. So my memory is,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: and you know, feel free to correct me if I'm
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: wrong here, but my memory is that the platforms that
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: they bring the best craft back to are named after
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: some of the ships from the culture novels Buying m Banks,
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: which are fabulous, fabulous bucks. And that's all of a
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: little touch because those names themselves are a little bit
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: quirky and a little bit whimsical, and there's a fairly
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: good history of giving things quirky names and also kind
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: of almost arthropesizing things. We saw this with the Master
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: of Us when they got their own Twitter accounts back
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: in the day, and people really got hooked into the
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: human journey of this artificial lander on Mars. And I
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: think companies are becoming aware of this and thinking it's
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: a really good way of helping the public opinion and
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: getting people more aware of what's going on. And these
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: things stick a lot better in your head than a barcut. Yeah. Absolutely.
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: I was just trying to look up some of the
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: names of the SpaceX landing pads, but they are not
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: out in front of me, but yeah, I've heard some
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: of them, and then, yeah, you're right, they are very,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: very very unusual some of them. While we're talking about
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: the SpaceX disassembly, we can't really go past Blue Origin,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: which is probably going to become SpaceX's most direct competitor
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: amongst others. And they've had success with and here's another name,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: the launch of New Glen.
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: Yes, and this has been a long time coming. It
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: was initially meant to launch in about twenty twenty, but
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: they've taken it careful, postponed, improved, postpond improved. Now, this
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: was a smaller rocket and when I say smaller. I
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: think it was only about nuineti meters toll. But this
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: is looking like it's going to be the big rival
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: in long term future to SpaceX, certainly in terms of
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: competing for American grants and mather opportunities. Blue Origin have
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: got interest, just like SpaceX have been involved in the
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: ongoing artemists of trying to get stuff to the Moon. Yeah,
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: and it's a really interesting mirror to the SpaceX launch
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: because with the SpaceX launch, the lower stage landed and
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: was captured beautifully, but the upper stage detonated with New Glenn.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Their primary focus was to just get the roocket toward it.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: That was the goal. It's the first ever test flight,
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: and that was achieved perfectly. They had a secondary goal though,
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: was trying to land their main booster back on their
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: launch PAB and it didn't quite work. So SpaceX has
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: got the first part right, Blue Origin got the second
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: part right. But it's a really nice bit of evidence
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: that things are moving forward. And me again, if we
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: go back to when I was a teenager in the nineties,
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: if you told me then that you'd have had reusable
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: launch vehicles that are a commercial thing that we're doing this,
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: it'd blown me away, and now it's become commonplace. You know,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: we have so many launches of sacllites for commercial purposes
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: going on that nobe ever hits about them unless they're
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: really enthusiastic, or something happens that shouldn't or something happens. Yeah,
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: it's usual thing of Nobby's interested in a new story
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: saying that something happened and it weren't perfectly smoothly and
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: it's perfectly mondane. But when something goes wrong it's big news. Yeah, yeah,
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: it is. So.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: In both cases they had success and failure, and both
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: parties basically said, no, look this is good because we
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: learned from these mistakes. And again, you know you're looking
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: at names. I didn't look up what New Glenn stood
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: for where it came from. But it's an odd name
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: for a spacecraft.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, there's so many of these little things go on.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: But again it's six in the head. It's better than
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: rocket one one seven four b Yeah, true, true.
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: I found some of the name SpaceX uses for its
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: landing sites. These were the barges I think that they
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: were using. Just read the instructions.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: Of course, I.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: Still love you and a shortfall of gravitas.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: Uh, link back to these culture novels where I read
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: them a long time ago, and you've got this hyper
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: advanced future society kind of thing where anything is possible,
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: and you've got these spaceships are sentient eyes that are
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: far more intelligent than anything else, but just kind of
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: vaguely tolerate humans and all the other aliens as their
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: passengers and have their own private inner lives and communications
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: with each other. Yeah, they're quite heavy going books at times,
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: but that side of it's just lovely. Yeah it is.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, I'm all more a big believer
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: in quirky, so I I don't really have a problem
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: with it. But Ship, I think was probably you know
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: that falls a bit short, Yes, but yeah, if you
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: want to chase up those stories, you can read them
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: on space dot com. This is space Nets with Andrew
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Duntley and Professor John de Yoanna. Okay, we take a
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: space nuts now, Johnny. This is sort of a follow
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: on story to something that Thread and I discussed more
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: than once in recent times, and that is looking at
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: whether or not there might be life in the atmosphere
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: of Venus, and a new paper has been released that
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: is actually suggesting that not only could there be life
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: in the atmosphere of Venus, and they're not saying there
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: is could be, it may well have come from Earth.
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: That's that's interesting in itself, and they've backed it up
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: with some.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Well data that they.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: Believe suggests it's a it's a it's a possibility it is.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: And this is all best automatic called punkspermia, that when
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: it was first proposed, was firmly considered by the establishment
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: at the time to be in the crunk box, to
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: be absolutely bond because it couldn't work. It's the idea
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: of that life can be transferred from one plummet when
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: not carried on the back of meteorites. So you have
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: a big impact on Earth, digs upload of rock, fling
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: some of that rock into space, and eventually some of
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: those rocks land on another planet and life spreads a
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: bit like the common cold on a bity train. You know,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: that whole thing of don't go near Earth. It's got
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: human ze contageous. And when this first came out, everybody
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: just saw it sounded bonkers because firstly, life can't exist
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: in space. Too hard not going to happen. Then you've
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: got it would take millions of years on average for
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: a bit to get from one place to another, and
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: that's still long, so it couldn't happen. And finally, if
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: a rock's ejected from a planet, then it's been in
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: a begin impact and that should statilized it, so it
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: should never happen. But then as time's gone on, all
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: of those kind of concepts have fallen down a bit.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: We found meteorites on Earth from the Moon. We found
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: them from Mars. You know the Allen Hills meteorites, one
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: of the famous ones which led to claims of life
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: on Mars a couple of decades ago that were eventually
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: shot down. We know that rocks get transferred from planet
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: to planet fairly straightforwardly. When I worked at the Open University,
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: this is from two thousand and six to two thousand
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: and nine, there were people there who were working on
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: this kind of stuff, looking into it. And what it
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: turns out is that when you get a fallow large
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: impact up to the kind of dinosaur co cling size impact,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: but the kind of thing that forms a substantial creater
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: on Earth, the closer you are to the middle, the
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: more intensive shockwave than the more damaging it is. And
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: the further out you go, the less intensive gets. So
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: the further away you are, the less strong the shock is.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: But that gradient is actually shallower, the bigger the impact is,
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: it falls off more slowly. What that leads to, bizarrely,
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: is that there is a range of distances from the
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: impact where that shock wave is strong enough to eject
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: rocks from the safes of the earth out of the atmosphere,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: particularly given that the thing that just hit as has
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: created a hole in the atmosphere to make a bit easier,
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: and that those rocks can be ejected intact, and the
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: shocks involved in the rock are weaker than the amount
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: of shock you'd need to step in. Other words, bacteria
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: could be ejected to space on the back of these
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: rocks without being killed. So that's another thing in its favor.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: And then you get studies that have looked into the
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: viability of bacteria in the vacuum of space with UV
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: radiation that suggests that they can remain viable, but a
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: much longer period of time than you think, because when
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: they guarding space, they kind of go into this statis
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: spore form and UV damage kill some of them. I'm
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: actually working with a PhD student down in Victoria who's
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: looking at this doing some experiments into the fact that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: the dead cells on the outside provide extra shielding. And
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: that's even before you consider that they can be bacteria
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: on the inside of the rock weather rock shields and
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: they detests. They put bacteria on the outside of the
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: space station, left them a few months, brought them back inside,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: and they culture them happily. You all, A step seem
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: to be that despite the fact this sounds ridiculous, the
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: outlandish idea, it's perfectly reasonable to think that life could
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: be passed around the Solar System like a tennis ball
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: bouncing around at the Australian Open going from planet to planet.
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: So that's become an established possibility. It's like to all
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: lot of discussions. There's interesting philosophical things. If we ever
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: find life on Mars, and that's still an if. Will
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: it be life that has a separate origin to life
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: on Earth, or will it be life that shares an
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: origin with life on Earth? And that's not necessarily saying
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: life start on Earth. We could be Martians, you know,
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: life could have beiger on Mars and been transferred to Earth. Yeah,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: we just don't know. But there are some predictions you
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: can make, and one of them is that if we
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: ever find life on another body in the Solar System,
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: there's a good possibility that will share a heritage with us.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: So that brings us, after a lot of jaunty waffle
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: to this story about Venus, and it's bringing together that
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: other story, which is the potential detection of this gas
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: called phosphenee venus, which was quite controversial. I know the
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: lead scientists quite well who did that work, and I
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: felt very sad for her some of the abuse and
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: vitriol that were directed to their team over the results.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: But it was a really interesting detection right at the
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: edge of sensitivity for their instruments. And what they said
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: was that we found this gas called phosphine on the Earth.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: The only way that is produced is through the action
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: of life or through human industry. There's no other chemical
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: process on Earth we know of that can make this.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: That doesn't mean that there aren't other possibilities, it's just
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: we don't know of them. So there is a possibility
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: that this could be being produced by life, but it's
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: not a detection of life. And there was a whole
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: cavalcade of arguments and stories that followed on from that,
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: but inspired by that, the team that have done this
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: paper have looked to say, if there is life in
• 31:39
  Speaker 2: the clouds of Venus, in this temperate layer where the
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: conditions are more similar to those on Earth than you
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: would have on Venus as surface, could that life actually
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: be earthlife? Could it be contamination from the Earth with
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: bacteria that have been transferred there through this panspermia route.
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: And they've done some calculations. There is a certain degree
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: of speculation and to try and figure out how much
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: material is being ejected from the Earth other time, how
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: much it reaches Venus, and to try and put that
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: into a sense of how many discrete bacteria would reach
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Venus in a billion year period. And they've got this
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: handway of a number of the billion bacteria in a
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: billion years. Now that's showing you how big deep time
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: is more than anything else. And what they say is
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: that doesn't mean there's one bacterium per year reaching Venus.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: It'll be clumpy. You'll get a rock delivering tens of
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: thousands of a time. But the idea is that if
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: you've got that level of delivery going on, all it
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: takes is a very small number of them to be
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: viable for life to suddenly become present there. Now you've
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: then got all the additional challenges of how does it
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: get into the atmosphere, all the rest of it. But
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: this is just an interesting thing pointing out again that
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: once you bring transpermia into the picture, you can no
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: longer say that when we found life elsewhere in the
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Solar System, that means we've shown that life originated there. Also,
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: as a total side point, it makes the efforts we
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: go to in steadilizing our spacecraft seem less relevant because,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: for example, when we send space craft to Jupiter to
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: the icy moons, I can, under some way we statilize
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: them this planetary protection thing. But material from Earth carrying
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: bacteria has been bombarding those moons for billions of years.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: If Earth life is going to get there, it's already there.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of interesting spins from this. But
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: it's interesting that an idea that, again when I was young,
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: was viewed as been really stupid and you know, extreme
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: and only talked about bi cranks, is now sufficiently mainstream
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: that this kind of research is going on to invistiate
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: the what ifs and to try and drive on from
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: that to make predictions. You know, the ultimate extent of
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: this is if we find life on Mars, if we
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: find life on Venus and we're able to isolate a
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: sample of it and study it, the prediction from this
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: is that we'd find that it shares a common heritage
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: with us, a share shares a common universal ancestor, I guess, fascinating. Yeah,
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: and what do you very night?
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: I have often discussed this. Do you think that day
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: will come where we might find something and we'll be
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: able to test whether or not it has a shared origin.
• 34:14
  Speaker 2: I'm absolutely an optimist, and I think if there is
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: life to be found in the Solar System, we will
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: find it. It's just a question of when rather than if.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: That is a big question, is if there is life there,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: we've got places to look. You know. Obviously, with every
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: decade that goes, our focus shifts a bit because we'll
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: earn more. So, for example, if we've been having this
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: chat a decade ago, we'd have been talking about Mars.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: We'd have been talking about the equator of Mars and
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: following what the wonderful rover missions are doing there. And
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: then there was that astonishing discovery of liquid water in
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: Mars of south polar cap that an Australian astronomy professor,
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: Graciela Caparelli, was very involved with with the Italian team
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: that did the red ass that this and suddenly it's
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: harder to get to Mars's South Ball, but suddenly that
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: looks a really promising place to go. Because on Earth,
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: if you drill down into contact, can you find these
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: lakes of liquid water that have been separated from the
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: rest of the Earth for ridiculous periods of time and
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: they're still teeming with life? Mad's ever had life? Maybe
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: it's still there in the waters at the south Pole,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: So our focus shifts a little bit. We've also got
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: the icy moons of droop from Saturn, and the more
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: we look, the more we realize there's a lot of
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: places we could look for life. And I'd love to
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: think that ten years, twenty years down the line, in
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: a future spased on this episode, we'll be talking about
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: the fact that we've definitely got some and people are
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: playing with it in a pew traditional learn more about it.
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then it escapes and kills humans all over
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: the planet.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: They're killy with shampoo, right. That was the way the
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: movie worked.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: That's right, Yes, yes, I know the one you're talking about.
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: That Yeah, probably, Yeah, it silly, silly film, but such evolution.
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: I think it was called it. Yeah, that's a great film,
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: very funny. Yeah.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: If you'd like to read up on pain, Spermia and
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: the the new paper has been released.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: It is available online.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: You can also read the preceed version of it at
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: space dot com. Before we go, Johnny, just quickly, we're
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: we up to with comic twenty twenty four. J threetlas
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Is it still alive? It is still a live ish
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it as a wonderful non answer. I got
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: some lovely photos of this comet back on Sunday evening,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: which I'm really pleased.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: With, really happy with. I went out last night and
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: there was one cloud in the sky and it was
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: right in front of the comet. Always the way it goes,
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to keep trying the next few nights.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: It's still relatively easily visible with the naked eye from
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: southern Hemisphere locations, but the photos of it people are
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: turning up from around the globe now are looking interesting.
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: So there is a suggestion that the snowball at the
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: heart of the comic. The nucleus actually fell apart unfragmented,
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: about a week ago. As we record this other fourteenth
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: fifteenth of January released a copious amount of dust. And
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: of the nature of how comets work, that means that
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: the comet hasn't really started faid yet. It's en hamster
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: comet's tail, possibly even making it a bit more spectacular
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: for us now, but we'll probably hasten the demise of
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: the comet. And when we were talking about this previously
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: talked about how if you've managed to live for another
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: six hundred thousand years, you'd see the comet return. That's
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: looking less likely now. I think it's pretty much done
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: and dusted, probably, but we don't know for sure, and
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: we'll find out more over the coming week. But in
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: the meantime, get out there tech photos because it's a
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: spectacular object. It is reasonably easily visible with the naked
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: eye if you know where to look. Said in currently
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: about an hour and a quarter hour and twenty minutes
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: after sunset for those of us in the southern hemisphere.
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: Northern hemisphere not so good. You can't really see it.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: But on photographs. Digital cameras are making a spectacular job
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: of showing this, and there's some gorgeous images out there.
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I've just looked at when on sky and telescope
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: dot org, and yeah, you can see how the tail
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: has become much more vivid and spread out as a
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: consequence of Yeah, it's well impending demise.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I suppose it's an astonishing image on Astronomy Picture of
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: the Day, the wonderful NASA site for today, the twentieth
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: of January. As we're recording this, showing the comet as
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: it was going around the Sun through the Lasco camera
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: that somebody's put together using different filters from the Lasco camera.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: So you've got different colored tails and there's one, two, three, four, five, six,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: seven different tails on the comet, which.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Is just n Yeah I can see that now.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: I just got it up. Yeah that was when it
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: was only visible in the daylight sky. But it shows
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: you just how active this thing got because it was
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: so class to the sun. And there are some discussions
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: that because it was so incredibly close in a couple
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: of those sales are actually probably sodium and iron our class.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: It got those kind of mineral source kind of materials.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: We're getting erupted from the surface to form tails, not
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: just water, ice and a little bit of gas. Yeah, fascinating.
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: Had I tried to have a look yesterday, but I
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: think I was a bit too early, but I will
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: make an effort. And the other thing that people are
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: getting excited about, although you you're suggesting this is a
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: bit premature, is the upcoming planetary alignment.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, which is not something that is anywhere near as
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: rare as the media is making it out to be.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: But the idea here is the planets are lining. So
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: your first ste is, oh, that's great. If I got
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: my binoculars, I could see them all in the same
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: field of view. And what it actually is is that
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: they're all in the same one hundred and eighty degree
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: arc of the sky. So if you were out a
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: little bit after sunset, you could see all the naked
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: eye planets, and if you've got your binoculars and a
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: telescope out, you could see your own searcher and as well,
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: all at the same time. What the coverage has left
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: out is that Mercury is actually not joining the party
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: at the minute. So this is viewed has been the
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: evening sky after sunset. The first thing you'll see has
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: been as Saturn's right next to it, juped as high
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: to the north as in the southern hemisphere. To the
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: south of those in the northern hemisphe Mars is rising
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: over to the east. It's just passed opposition. They're all there.
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: Urinus and Nection are over roughly in the same part
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: of the sky as Saturn and Venus, so you can
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: find them with binoculars in the telescope. But Mercury is
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: currently visible in the morning sky. For Mercury to join
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: the party, we've got to wait another month, and that's
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: going to be at the end of February. So maybe
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: if you you know, commet Atlas, which is saddler to
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: the horizon, is masquerading as Mercury for the purposes of
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: the current discussion, I guess giving us a number of
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: things to see. But if you really want to see
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: all of them at once, you're going to have to
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: wait till a month's time. And at that point, Saturn
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: and Mercury and Venus will be a fair bit lower
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: to the horizon, a little bit hard ad spot that
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: then you will be able to see all the naked
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: eye planets are all at once in the sky. At
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: the same time, and then you'll go, well, the spread
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: out of over one hundred and eighty degrees, isn't that pretty?
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I definitely want to have a look at that,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and yah, got plenty of time to do it, so yeah, fantastic.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: All right, Thank you Joy.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: As always, I don't forget. If you would like to
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: follow up on those stories, you can do that in
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: our show notes.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: Don't forget to visit us online at space Nuts podcast
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: dot com or space nuts dot io and check out
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: our various pages, including our shop which is full of
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: all sorts of junk stuff, really good stuff that you
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: can take a peek at. Thanks Johnny, as always, we'll
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: catch you on the very next episode.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: Pleasure.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Thanks for having me Johnny Horner, professor of astrophysics standing
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: in for Professor Fred Watson. And thanks to here in
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the studio who didn't turn up today because he actually
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: got a free ticket on a spacecraft called Ship and
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: from me Andrew Dunkley. Thanks for your company. We'll see
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: you on the next episode of Space Nuts.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Until then, bye bye.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Thanks.
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, and all your favorite
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: podcast You can also stream on demand at bytes dot com.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: This has been another quality podcast production from fights dot com.