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How SpaceX Breaks Satellite Records and What It Means for Earth Orbit Safety · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Andrew Dunkley: Hi there. Thanks for joining us. This is
0:02
Space Nuts. We talk astronomy and space
0:04
science and sometimes we talk about things
0:07
that have got nothing to do with astronomy
0:09
and space science. You just never know. We
0:11
throw up all sorts of things and sometimes we
0:13
throw up. Uh, today
0:16
we will be talking about SpaceX. They're in
0:19
the news again and it's all about the
0:21
numbers. And I'm not talking their share
0:23
price. Well, actually, I probably will. Um,
0:26
educating the public about the real moon.
0:29
It's a, ah, it's an issue that NASA thinks
0:31
needs to be dealt with. We've got a Three Eye
0:33
Atlas update. Yes. You thought it was long
0:36
gone, never to be spoken of again. Not true.
0:38
Fascinating, uh, facts have been, uh,
0:41
revealed about this amazing little rock
0:44
and,
0:46
Professor Fred Watson: and
0:47
Andrew Dunkley: we might have to start again.
0:50
Professor Fred Watson: I'm sorry, I can cut this bit out. Just cut
0:52
that bit out. I'm sorry. M. Marty's just got
0:55
back from walking the dog. Hi, Marty.
0:57
Andrew Dunkley: We that bit in?
0:58
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah.
0:59
Andrew Dunkley: That's okay. And what was the last thing?
1:02
Uh, our, uh, son's death.
1:03
Professor Fred Watson: I've already interrupted it.
1:05
Andrew Dunkley: G'.
1:06
Professor Fred Watson: Day.
1:07
Professor Fred Watson: Sorry.
1:08
Andrew Dunkley: You're right.
1:09
Professor Fred Watson: It's all good. It's all good.
1:11
Andrew Dunkley: It's only the intro.
1:12
Professor Fred Watson: It's only the intro.
1:13
Andrew Dunkley: Not an important bit. Anyway,
1:16
whatever I was talking about is all coming up
1:18
on this episode of space
1:20
nuts.
1:21
Professor Fred Watson: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
1:24
10, 9. Ignition
1:26
sequence start.
1:27
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, space nuts.
1:28
Professor Fred Watson: 5, 4, 4, 3, 2. 1, 2, 3, 4,
1:31
5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
1:33
Professor Fred Watson: Space nuts.
1:34
Professor Fred Watson: Astronauts report. It feels good.
1:37
Andrew Dunkley: Takes me back to my old radio policy. If
1:39
somebody walked into the studio, they were on
1:41
the show and that's exactly what happened.
1:44
And joining us aside from Marnie is Professor
1:46
Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large.
1:48
Hello, Fred Watson.
1:50
Professor Fred Watson: Hello, Andrew. Sorry.
1:53
Andrew Dunkley: That's okay.
1:54
Professor Fred Watson: I'm glad.
1:54
Andrew Dunkley: I don't mind. I don't mind. I used to work
1:57
with some radio people who got so annoyed, so
1:59
annoyed if they were interrupted, any reason
2:02
whatsoever. We even had one guy who
2:05
wouldn't even accept you looking
2:08
at him through the window.
2:10
Professor Fred Watson: Really?
2:11
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, he used to get really steamed
2:14
Professor Fred Watson: from the producer suite through to the.
2:16
Yeah, yeah.
2:18
Andrew Dunkley: When he was in the studio, you weren't
2:20
allowed to go in and you weren't allowed to
2:23
look at him through the window. Three solid
2:26
hours of isolation. Uh, yeah, it was,
2:29
um. And you know, sometimes you'd do it
2:31
accidentally.
2:32
Professor Fred Watson: Of course you would. Yeah, yeah. Of course
2:34
you would. Yeah.
2:34
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, they were fun times.
2:36
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
2:37
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
2:37
Andrew Dunkley: Um, so Marnie's well and you're well and
2:40
everybody's well.
2:41
Professor Fred Watson: We're doing all right. That's right.
2:43
Andrew Dunkley: And something else that's doing well is
2:46
SpaceX. Probably not their share price,
2:48
which, uh, is currently showing what they
2:51
call correction, but it hit a
2:54
massive high not long after the,
2:56
um, company went public. But, uh, now,
3:00
uh, what do they call it? Adjusting. Yeah,
3:02
adjusting.
3:03
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Um, those numbers are,
3:05
um, a bit alien to me. Uh,
3:08
as I've said before, I only understood. I
3:11
only understand billions when they've got
3:13
light years after them. Uh, but they have
3:16
dollars after them. And I have watched, yes,
3:18
I've watched the fortunes of, um, SpaceX
3:20
since the IPO. See, I'm in the jargon there.
3:23
The initial public year, uh,
3:26
and uh, yes, you're right, it looks as though
3:29
it's going to be back where it started. I
3:31
think the way things are going,
3:34
Andrew Dunkley: that's generally what happens. And sometimes
3:36
they keep going below that and they bounce
3:38
back later.
3:39
Professor Fred Watson: Um,
3:42
Andrew Dunkley: I find it really bizarre that we base our
3:45
entire wealth and future on
3:47
something as volatile as the stock market.
3:49
I've never understood that side of the
3:52
business world. And your whole retirement
3:55
is based on this stuff? Uh, in
3:58
some cases, and especially in Australia with
4:00
our superannuation system and um, you
4:03
know, you could just be. I've known people
4:06
who were just about to retire and there'd
4:07
been a big crash and they had to work another
4:09
decade.
4:10
Professor Fred Watson: It's just. Wow.
4:11
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, Gosh, wow.
4:13
Professor Fred Watson: M. Scary stuff.
4:14
Andrew Dunkley: Anyway, we're not talking about that today.
4:16
Even though we were talking about that today.
4:18
Uh, we're talking about, uh, uh, something
4:20
else to do with Elon Musk's company,
4:23
SpaceX, and that is that they have,
4:25
um, They've basically set a space launch
4:28
record.
4:30
Professor Fred Watson: They have. It's really quite a milestone when
4:32
you think about it. What they have
4:35
done, uh, is launched
4:38
15,262
4:41
satellites, uh, as of June
4:44
12th. I mean, they're launching so many, uh,
4:47
you've got to pick a date for it. But June
4:50
12, 15,262 satellites.
4:53
But here's the rub, here's why it's a record.
4:55
The combined total of all
4:58
other companies and organ
5:01
since 1957, when Sputnik 1 was launched,
5:04
is 15,138.
5:07
So SpaceX has now launched more
5:10
satellites than anyone else in
5:13
history combined. Combined.
5:16
Andrew Dunkley: Wow. So they've more or less doubled the
5:19
number of satellites by themselves.
5:22
Professor Fred Watson: That's right. Except a lot of those, uh,
5:24
they're
5:24
Andrew Dunkley: not up there anymore.
5:25
Professor Fred Watson: A lot of those aren't up there anymore. I
5:27
think they have. I think it's about 11,000
5:29
operational Starlink satellites At the
5:31
moment, but there's that have re entered and
5:34
1,000 more that are not activated yet. Those
5:37
are the sorts of numbers. Um, so
5:40
it means uh, the total
5:42
few days or a few weeks since I looked at
5:44
this figure, but it's about 15,000 altogether
5:47
is the number of operational satellites with
5:49
of course huge numbers of ones that are no
5:52
longer operational and even more numbers of
5:54
bits of space junk that you can't track.
5:57
But yes, what an extraordinary record. And of
6:00
course what's brought this
6:03
is uh, uh, what's brought SpaceX
6:06
to this milestone is the Falcon 9 rocket
6:08
which has been so successful,
6:11
um, uh, they're now reused. I think
6:14
the record is still 33 for the number of
6:17
times a Falcon booster has been reused. That
6:20
would have been unthinkable, uh,
6:23
not much more than a decade ago. It was 2015
6:25
when they launched, when they had the first
6:27
recovery. Um, yes, ah,
6:30
really quite remarkable. So there were 165
6:33
falcon flights in 20. 25. That's
6:36
uh, you, that's uh, three a week basically,
6:38
isn't it?
6:39
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. That's incredible. And of
6:42
course he's talking about that um,
6:43
supercomputer satellite system that
6:46
he wants to um, create and that's going to
6:49
put many, many more up there if he goes ahead
6:52
with it.
6:53
Professor Fred Watson: It's a million. That's right. Which is uh,
6:55
eye watering in many ways.
6:58
It makes you shed tears if you're an
7:00
astronomer. Um, what's going to speed
7:03
basically for
7:03
Andrew Dunkley: artificial intelligence systems, isn't it?
7:05
Professor Fred Watson: It is, yes. It's they're orbiting the plans
7:08
for an orbital data centre with a million
7:11
linked satellites. And what will enable that
7:13
or yes, what will facilitate it, perhaps
7:15
that's the word is the next step, which is
7:18
already, it's already been tested out, is
7:21
launching these satellites using uh, Starship
7:23
rather than the Falcon, because Starship can,
7:26
I mean falcons typically, they launch about
7:28
20 at a time, 20 Starlink satellites at a
7:30
time. With the Falcon 9 um,
7:33
it's when you move to
7:35
Starship you're talking about much, much
7:38
higher numbers. I don't know how many they
7:40
could launch but it's probably uh, well over
7:43
100, maybe even in the 200s. Wow.
7:46
Andrew Dunkley: I know astronomers wouldn't be happy with
7:48
another million satellites up there crunching
7:51
AI data. But um, interestingly
7:53
enough we were talking to our son the other
7:56
day who works in um, uh,
7:59
I suppose you could call it the uh,
8:02
gross retail area of electronics
8:06
and he is frustrated at the
8:08
moment because he'll get a client that wants
8:11
quotes on various electronic Items, and
8:14
we're talking smartphones, other smart
8:15
devices. And then when the
8:18
order comes in, the price has been hiked
8:21
because of a lack of random
8:23
access memory available because it's being
8:26
chewed up by AI companies.
8:27
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, interesting.
8:28
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. So there's a world shortage
8:31
of, um, RAM and DRAM and a few other,
8:35
um, memory chips that are required for
8:38
household devices like computers,
8:41
um, because they're all being
8:44
eaten up by these, uh, AI facilities.
8:48
It's a bit of a problem at the moment.
8:50
Professor Fred Watson: It's a good point. It hadn't occurred to me
8:53
that there might be a shortage of that sort
8:54
Andrew Dunkley: of thing because, well, and it's hitting the
8:57
household market. People who want to buy a
8:59
computer for themselves at home, uh, facing
9:01
price hikes because of this. So
9:04
it's a thing. It is a thing. So maybe,
9:07
maybe Elon's found a way around that, or
9:10
maybe he's getting all the chips. I don't
9:12
know.
9:12
Professor Fred Watson: Well, I think that's what it is. Uh, yeah. If
9:14
the AI companies have got first dibs on, uh,
9:18
the memories for the data centres, that's
9:20
where it's all going to happen. Yes.
9:23
Andrew Dunkley: It's like when I was at school, Fred Watson,
9:24
you don't share your chips.
9:29
Professor Fred Watson: You were lucky to have chips. We didn't have
9:31
chips when we were at school.
9:33
Andrew Dunkley: Just to live in a tin pan.
9:36
Professor Fred Watson: Oh, boy.
9:37
Andrew Dunkley: So, yeah, things are, um, steadily moving
9:40
along for SpaceX and they've achieved
9:43
a major milestone, which probably won't stop
9:46
there, but they're 100 ahead of the
9:48
collective number of satellites put into
9:51
orbit around Earth since 1957.
9:54
Um, yeah, they've doubled the number and
9:57
some. And probably will continue.
10:00
This is Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley here with
10:03
Professor Fred Watson Watson.
10:07
Professor Fred Watson: Roger, your lab is right here.
10:08
Professor Fred Watson: Also Space Nuts.
10:10
Andrew Dunkley: Our next storey takes us to the moon.
10:13
It's kind of in fashion again now,
10:15
particularly with the Artemis programme and,
10:17
uh, the recent mission to fling people around
10:19
the moon and take some pretty pictures and
10:22
witness some of the amazing things that
10:23
happen on the moon. However,
10:27
NASA believes that things need to be done
10:29
properly in terms of educating the public.
10:33
Why is this happening?
10:35
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it's, uh, the initiative of a
10:38
professor of astronomy and planetary
10:41
sciences in the Department of Physics at the
10:43
University of Central Florida, whose name is
10:45
Daniel Britt, uh, and
10:48
he's very well up, uh, in
10:51
what it's like on the moon because he's
10:54
director, uh, of the Centre for Lunar and
10:56
Asteroid Surface Science. So
10:59
they had, um, what they call a Space
11:02
Resources Roundtable earlier this month,
11:05
uh, and this month being June uh, 20,
11:07
26, uh, at the Colorado School of Mines.
11:10
And that sort of gives you a bit of an idea
11:12
where this is coming from.
11:13
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
11:14
Professor Fred Watson: Um, and uh. So um,
11:16
Professor Britt, uh, Daniel Britt,
11:19
uh, says um.
11:22
And really to put this in a nutshell, to put
11:25
the nub of the storey, he says, I wish I
11:27
could say that engineers and managers know
11:29
better, but they don't. We are training a
11:32
generation of engineers not to worry about
11:36
terrain. If the artists are
11:39
getting it wrong when they depict the moon,
11:40
it's our fault. Let's stop fooling ourselves.
11:44
Um, and basically he went on
11:47
to complain uh, about a number
11:50
of uh, the sort of artists
11:54
representations of the lunar
11:56
surface, um, which are
11:59
promulgated by commercial space ventures,
12:02
but also NASA. Um, and
12:04
I've actually had the same thought.
12:07
I've seen some of NASA's artists impressions
12:10
of you know, a base on the moon and what they
12:12
look like and thought that all looks very,
12:15
very neat and tidy. Uh, very neat
12:18
and tidy indeed. And so um, what Daniel, uh,
12:21
Britt has done is kind of
12:23
highlighted uh, all the things that are wrong
12:26
with those pictures that might actually
12:28
transform the way we think about the lunar
12:31
surface.
12:32
Andrew Dunkley: Why is that such a problem though? Um,
12:35
is this going to um. You know, what
12:38
does it change?
12:39
Professor Fred Watson: So um. The reality
12:42
is different from uh, what we
12:45
depict. So if you're always depicting the
12:47
lunar surface as something neat and tidy
12:49
then. And you're training your engineers who
12:51
are building the spacecraft and doing all the
12:53
rest, you know, setting up all the
12:55
infrastructure and they've got a false idea
12:57
of what it's like. And so what um, Daniel
13:00
Britt has done is highlighted
13:03
some uh, of the, you know, some of the
13:05
problems uh in those illustrations starting
13:08
with small craters and the
13:11
lunar dust. Uh, and um,
13:14
it goes on to talk about dirty astronauts,
13:16
dirty equipment and dirty habitats and you've
13:19
only to look at um, some of the
13:22
imagery from the Apollo missions to see
13:25
how dirty the astronauts get
13:27
because that dust gets everywhere. It's
13:30
uh, as it said, captioned to ah, one of
13:33
um, uh, Daniel Britt's images. Dust is a fact
13:36
of life in lunar ops. It gets everywhere.
13:39
Uh, and so we've got the Apollo
13:42
experience to judge from. Um.
13:46
And it's also
13:49
going to be um, much more difficult
13:52
to cope with the dust uh in the
13:55
Apollo programmes because you're
13:58
uh, in the south polar region of the moon.
14:01
That's where, sorry, not Apollo, Artemis,
14:03
uh, Artemis is concentrating on the south
14:05
polar region of the moon. And the. That
14:08
means you've got a very Low sun angle and
14:12
the dust is just going to be everywhere.
14:15
Uh, and you know, um,
14:18
uh, so you might have interference from
14:21
the dust, but also, um, if
14:24
you're walking around on the surface, it's
14:27
going to be very easy to miss because of the
14:29
lower sun angle. The sun's always in your
14:31
eyes. It's going to be very easy to miss
14:33
little craters and there are small craters
14:35
everywhere. Um, uh, it's
14:39
a really difficult environment in that
14:42
regard. Uh, and he goes on to
14:45
um, you know, to sort of spot,
14:48
uh, the other things that are going to be
14:50
problematic. Um,
14:53
uh, one of them is the number of boulders
14:55
there are as well on the surface. Um,
14:58
um, it's got a.
15:02
The Apollo images, he
15:05
says, uh, were taken down sun.
15:07
In other words, you're looking with the sun
15:09
behind you. Uh, and that gives.
15:12
It sort of hides all the shadows of all the
15:14
boulders and things that were lying around.
15:17
Um, I mean we've talked before about how
15:18
lucky Apollo 11 was because there were, you
15:21
know, when Neil Armstrong was bringing the
15:24
lunar module down onto the surface, uh,
15:27
all he could see was all these boulders.
15:31
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, And I'm just looking at a
15:34
real image of Apollo 15
15:36
and they had a dicey landing as well.
15:39
They actually landed on a piece of
15:42
ground at an 11 degree tilt.
15:45
Professor Fred Watson: That's correct, yes. That's one of the other
15:48
issues that he's highlighted is the tilt,
15:51
uh, uh, of the terrain that you
15:54
land on. Um, Apollo 14, 7 degrees,
15:56
Apollo 15, 11 degrees. And yes, that's quite
15:59
a serious angle. It is. That does not,
16:02
um, go well if you've got a
16:05
very tall landing craft, which is what the
16:10
SpaceX's starship will be. Starship? The
16:13
Lunar Lander. Um, that's one of the
16:16
two, um, landing vehicles that are currently
16:18
being considered by NASA. That's. I can't
16:21
remember what it is. I think it's 37 metres
16:22
tall. It might be even taller than that. It's
16:25
enormous. And if you put that on an 11 degree
16:27
tilt, you're going to be worried that the
16:30
things are going to fall over, which will not
16:32
be good news.
16:32
Andrew Dunkley: You're going to have to pick a really, really
16:34
good spot and they're few and far between on
16:37
the moon. And I can imagine, you know, a
16:39
vertical landing craft like
16:42
uh, that a very tall rocket is going to blast
16:45
up dust like nothing else.
16:47
Professor Fred Watson: Yep, that's right. Uh, and in fact I think
16:50
there's a quote from one of the Apollo
16:52
astronauts because of the amount of dust that
16:55
was being blown up by their exhaust as they
16:57
were trying to land, they couldn't actually
16:59
sea. Uh, where. Where to.
17:02
Where. Where was the safest landing
17:05
point.
17:06
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
17:06
Andrew Dunkley: Ah, that's scary, isn't it? And not to
17:07
mention that dust is one of the big perils
17:10
of electronics.
17:12
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
17:13
Andrew Dunkley: You don't want dust getting into anything. In
17:16
fact, I think in the early days of home
17:18
computing, one of the big problems was,
17:20
uh, you had to keep your computer cool, but
17:22
in doing so, you're sucking dust into the,
17:25
into the machine and that's. That could get
17:27
into the processes and the. And the
17:29
drives and. Yeah, all sorts of trouble. In
17:32
fact, um, if you ever open up a home,
17:35
um, computer, particularly an old desktop,
17:38
first thing you notice is all the dust.
17:40
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's correct, yes. Which has been
17:42
sucked in. Exactly. As you've said. Um,
17:46
if I can. There's a couple of paragraphs that
17:48
really sum up, ah, Daniel Britt's view of all
17:50
this. And remember, he's a professor of lunar
17:53
surfaces, so he knows what he's doing. Yes,
17:55
he says these are artists impressions, but
17:58
somebody is telling the artist what to draw.
17:59
I love the idea of landing and operating on a
18:02
moon without dust, small craters and rough
18:04
terrain. However, we see the misconception
18:07
of a flat, gentle moon everywhere. Commercial
18:09
providers are just as bad. No dust, almost no
18:12
small craters, no tipping problems.
18:14
Yes, these are artists impressions and, uh,
18:16
getting it wrong. NASA knows better. All
18:19
these people should know better. But don't
18:20
let's not fool the public. We owe them better
18:22
data. He's really having a go about it, isn't
18:25
he?
18:25
Andrew Dunkley: Well, I think he's got a good point.
18:26
Professor Fred Watson: He's got a very good point. Yes, he has
18:28
indeed. Yeah.
18:29
Andrew Dunkley: Um, you know, we might go on holiday there
18:32
one day and we'd turn up and go, this place
18:33
is crap, it's a dump. Um,
18:36
where's the pool? Oh, yeah,
18:39
yeah, it was in the
18:41
brochure. Um, but no, I see his
18:44
point. And, um. Yeah, I suppose
18:47
organisations like NASA who have
18:50
basically led the race to the moon since
18:53
the year Dot. Um, yeah, probably should.
18:55
Should just take a bit of notice of what he's
18:58
saying. Yeah, for sure. If you'd like to
19:01
cheque that storey out, it's a good read.
19:03
It's@space.com.
19:06
uh, let's move straight on to our next
19:07
storey, Fred Watson.
19:08
And this one is, uh. Oh, gosh, something
19:11
we've spoken about, uh, several times
19:13
recently because it was a pretty exciting
19:15
find. That was Comet, uh, 3i
19:18
Atlas. What brings it back to the
19:20
fore? I thought it was all dealt with and
19:22
gone and on its way to wherever the heck it's
19:25
headed. But it's, it's
19:28
back in the news.
19:29
Professor Fred Watson: It is back in the news and I think it's back
19:31
in the news. Um, this might be the.
19:34
Well who. Never say never but I
19:37
think this might be the last major paper
19:39
about UH3i Atlas
19:42
and its composition and what
19:45
we now know about it. And it comes from a
19:47
number of studies principally
19:50
using uh the Webb Telescope.
19:54
Uh these are analyses of
19:57
the outgassing, the material that's
19:59
outgassing being outgassed uh from
20:02
3i atlas surface. Remember it's ah, an
20:05
interstellar asteroid. It has entered the
20:07
solar system. Last October I think was when
20:09
it was discovered uh zooming through at
20:12
speeds in the region of 60 kilometres per
20:14
second which is too fast for it to belong to
20:16
the solar system. And it's now on its way
20:18
out. Uh but uh, a lot of um,
20:21
resources have been used to observe it
20:23
because it's a free gift from another solar
20:25
system. The fact that we've got uh this
20:28
object coming through and so the
20:31
analyses that have been done are
20:34
really very very interesting uh
20:37
in terms of what they tell us about
20:41
the wide blue yonder, about the chemical
20:44
composition of solar systems other
20:47
than our own. And and in
20:50
the same breath it sort of tells us
20:53
uh a bit more about our own solar
20:56
system, how unusual it might be uh
20:59
because this is something quite
21:02
different. Um so the two
21:05
studies involved, one which was conducted
21:07
using the Webb Telescope, uh and the other
21:10
uh which was led by um an astronomer from the
21:13
University of Edinburgh uh which was one of
21:15
my alma maters, uh, uh that was
21:18
using the Very Large Telescope, the vlt uh at
21:20
Cerro Paranal in Chile, the European
21:23
Southern Observatory's major facility.
21:26
And what they've done is essentially looked
21:29
at isotope ratios. Uh
21:32
they've looked in particular molecules,
21:35
particular molecules like H2O water,
21:38
CO2, carbon dioxide, CO, carbon
21:40
monoxide and um
21:43
there's a plot uh which is on. It's actually
21:46
basically NASA's press release about this. Uh
21:49
the press release is titled NASA's Webb Find
21:52
Clues to Ancient Distant Origin of Comet 3i
21:55
Atlas. And the plot shows
21:58
sort of the um isotope ratios.
22:01
It's basically too small for me to read the
22:03
individual numbers on it. Um but
22:06
for uh all the
22:09
um solar system comets that have
22:11
been observed, uh including I notice uh
22:14
Comet Hartley 2 which is uh one discovered by
22:17
my old friend and colleague Malcolm Hartley,
22:20
uh it was visited by a spacecraft a number of
22:22
years ago. He became a, an international
22:25
celebrity because of that, we, uh, used to
22:27
work together at the Schmidt UK Schmidt
22:28
telescope. But that's one of the, um,
22:31
solar system comets that they highlight in
22:33
this plot. And you can see that the various,
22:36
um, aspects, notably what are called
22:39
heavy carbon and heavy hydrogen. So these are
22:42
different isotopes of carbon and hydrogen.
22:45
You can see where they sit in
22:48
the solar system, this whole line of
22:51
red circles which are, uh, representations on
22:54
the plot, um, all in a neat,
22:57
neatish line anyway. And then way off
23:00
to the right at, uh, much higher
23:02
ratios of carbon 12 to carbon 13 and much
23:05
higher ratios of heavy hydrogen, uh,
23:08
to normal, uh, hydrogen, which we've talked
23:11
about a lot. But way off to the right is
23:14
3i atlas.
23:15
Andrew Dunkley: Um, so that's saying the concentrations are,
23:18
uh, more significant.
23:20
Professor Fred Watson: They're very, very different, different
23:22
concentrations of the isotopes. Um,
23:26
and that basically,
23:30
uh, suggests, um, some of the issues
23:33
on the history, uh, of
23:38
the comet. I might read a little bit because
23:40
there's some very nice summaries here on the
23:43
press release. Um,
23:46
so one of the M instruments used on the web
23:48
showed only traces of carbon 13 compared to
23:51
lighter weight carbon 12. This points to a
23:54
very old origin for 3i atlas
23:57
as stellar systems become enriched with
23:59
carbon 13 over time as generations of stars
24:01
are born and die in the galaxy. That's why
24:03
there are higher levels of carbon 13 in our
24:06
system around our sun, which formed
24:08
relatively recently, 4.5 billion
24:11
years ago. Um, it,
24:13
uh, also says, uh, there were
24:16
exceptionally high levels of deuterium, about
24:18
30 times more than seen in solar system
24:20
comets. This implies that 3i Atlas
24:23
may have originated in a very cold system
24:26
much earlier in the history of our, ah,
24:28
galaxy. Um, uh, so these
24:31
are all clues about, uh,
24:34
the origin. And, uh, once again, reading from
24:36
the press release, the research team
24:38
estimates that 3i Atlas could have formed
24:41
as long as 10 to 12 billion years
24:43
ago.
24:44
Professor Fred Watson: Wow.
24:45
Professor Fred Watson: During the universe's cosmic noon, when star
24:47
formation was at its height, its young
24:50
origin solar system was likely ensconced
24:53
in a relatively cold, dense cloud.
24:56
The abundance of heavy water shows that 3i
24:58
Atlas spent its formative years in a deeply
25:01
frozen state. This is quite extraordinary.
25:05
Andrew Dunkley: Amazing.
25:05
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Ah,
25:07
Andrew Dunkley: it's come from a place that was very
25:09
different to now. Um, and, and
25:13
I guess that's the difference in
25:16
terms of the time scales we're talking about
25:19
what it was like then, what it's like now.
25:21
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
25:22
Andrew Dunkley: It's like a little time machine.
25:24
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Uh, but yes, exactly. It's a
25:27
time capsule. It's a lovely time capsule.
25:30
Um, in uh, the way it's been analysed,
25:33
I'd have to say I take my hat off to all
25:35
these scientists for the imagination that's
25:38
been used in, in devising the experiments
25:40
that have been developed. These observations
25:42
tell us, uh, quite unequivocal things about
25:45
this object which we would not otherwise have
25:48
known. And it again highlights
25:51
just how different our own solar system is to
25:54
probably most of the other solar
25:57
systems that we can look out of and look out
25:59
of beyond our galaxy and see, um,
26:02
something formed 12 billion years ago that
26:05
would be very, very different from the
26:08
universe that we see now.
26:10
Andrew Dunkley: I think it's incredible that in this day and
26:12
age that we can look at a rock hurtling
26:15
through space at 1.4 billion kilometres
26:18
distant or wherever. You know, it was close
26:19
in that at one stage, but you know what I
26:21
mean, and be able to break it down and say
26:24
this is exactly what we're looking at. And
26:27
because of that we think it came from the
26:30
early universe. Yeah, it's just incredible.
26:32
Incredible. Uh, and a great storey to,
26:35
um, uh, read, uh, which you can do at, uh,
26:38
The NASA website, science.NASA.gov uh,
26:41
you can also read the paper which was
26:43
published in the journal Nature. This is
26:46
Space Nuts, Andrew Dunkley with Professor
26:48
Fred Watson Watson.
26:51
Professor Fred Watson: I'm going to step off the land now.
26:55
That's one small step for man,
27:01
one diabetes for man.
27:04
Professor Fred Watson: Space Nuts.
27:06
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, the other day for Fred Watson.
27:07
In one of our previous episodes we talked
27:10
about the death of our sun and how
27:12
it'll turn into a red giant and fry us all
27:15
and, um, you know, free barbecue gas. But
27:18
that's about it. Um,
27:21
and we've had questions about it as well.
27:24
Now there's some new information about the
27:27
death spiral of our, of our only
27:29
or our nearest star. And
27:33
it's a bit weird.
27:35
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, it is. Uh, there's a very nice Space.com
27:38
piece on this written by Robert Lee. I, uh,
27:40
love, uh, Robert's headline. Uh, our sun
27:43
is destined to kick and spit its way
27:46
across the solar system when it dies.
27:48
Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, great.
27:51
Professor Fred Watson: Um, that's right.
27:54
Uh, and the first sentence
27:57
is. Scientists have discovered that dying
27:58
stars don't go down without a fight. Um, Yes,
28:01
I like that theme very much.
28:03
Andrew Dunkley: We shouldn't be surprised by that.
28:04
Professor Fred Watson: Not really. No. That's right. So, uh, what
28:07
this is about is the later stages of
28:10
the sun's life. Um, it,
28:13
uh, seems, um, inevitable from what we know
28:16
about the way stars behave, that within the
28:19
next 3 to 5 billion years the
28:21
hydrogen in the core of the sun will run out
28:24
the Core collapses and the outer layers of
28:27
the star uh basically puff outwards,
28:30
um perhaps making the star 100
28:33
times its original diameter.
28:36
So you know our sun's going to get very big,
28:38
uh, big enough probably to swallow up the
28:40
Earth. Um and what you get is
28:43
the uh, you know, you get a planetary nebula
28:46
forming. That's what we call them. That's
28:48
that glow of circle of glowing gas or sphere
28:51
of glowing gas with a white dwarf at the
28:53
centre. Um, probably actually uh,
28:58
um, the sun might even be as big as the orbit
29:00
of Mars uh when it goes. But it's a person
29:03
at ah, California Institute of Technology,
29:06
Uh Jim Fuller has calculated
29:09
that during that process
29:12
before the star becomes a white
29:14
dwarf, it
29:17
basically spits. Uh,
29:20
he says it will receive around
29:23
10,000 little kicks over the
29:26
course of hundreds of thousands of years. So
29:29
they're well spaced out. But these are
29:31
blobs of plasma that are being
29:33
ejected from the, the
29:36
surface of this bloated uh, version
29:39
of the sun, the red giant. And the point
29:42
that uh, Jim Fuller is making is
29:45
um, it's a good one. It's basic physics.
29:49
If you eject a blob of matter
29:52
from the sun, the sun gets a kick in the
29:54
opposite direction. Um, oh yeah, that makes
29:57
sense. For every action there's an equal and
29:59
opposite reaction. And so these,
30:02
um, he suggests will
30:06
push the sun around uh,
30:10
uh, in different random directions. What
30:13
is technically known as a random walk. Um,
30:16
so basically Random Walk is as the
30:19
title suggests, uh, you um,
30:23
you know, you basically
30:25
randomise uh movement uh in
30:28
any given direction and you end up with this
30:31
random walk process. And so uh, Jim
30:33
Fuller said that for a red giant
30:37
the random walk
30:40
would basically uh, each of these spits
30:43
would see uh, the thing moving
30:46
at uh, the sun moving at around
30:48
3,540 kilometres an hour.
30:51
Professor Fred Watson: Whoa.
30:52
Professor Fred Watson: Uh, now that's a lot uh in
30:54
terrestrial terms. But um,
30:57
when you think about stars that are
30:59
collapsing uh into um,
31:02
basically black holes, uh in supernova
31:05
explosions which the sun won't do, uh because
31:07
it's not big enough, uh, uh,
31:10
that's still a very small velocity but it
31:13
still produces a random walk. I think that
31:15
velocity is actually the
31:19
uh, overall motion that you get from this
31:21
random walk process. You get it actually
31:23
moving in a random direction in space.
31:27
Andrew Dunkley: So it's going to kick and scream and go
31:30
down like, I don't know, um,
31:33
a heavyweight boxer. It's, it's, it's not.
31:35
And it's going to bounce around the ring
31:37
like.
31:38
Professor Fred Watson: Yes, yeah.
31:39
Andrew Dunkley: Muhammad Ali.
31:40
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yep. Or, or even Cassius Clay.
31:43
Andrew Dunkley: Or Cassius Clay, whichever you like.
31:45
Professor Fred Watson: Um, same person,
31:48
definitely.
31:49
Andrew Dunkley: Ah, okay. Well,
31:52
I guess the question is how did they figure
31:54
that out?
31:55
Professor Fred Watson: Yes. So, um, I think that's, um. You
31:58
know, what you do is you look at the, um,
32:01
thermo hydrodynamics of the interior of the
32:03
sun as its atmosphere is
32:06
changing. Uh, in fact,
32:09
I should say the atmospheres of stars, uh,
32:11
are, uh, an area of research that has been
32:14
really very well studied over the last 50
32:17
years from a theoretical viewpoint. And I've
32:19
sort of watched that the way that evolves a
32:21
bit. Because my, um, job at one
32:24
stage as the project manager of the RAVE
32:26
survey, the Radial Velocity Experiment, uh,
32:28
which we carried out on the UK
32:31
Schmidt, measured the spectra of half a
32:33
million stars. And a lot of what we did with
32:35
that, uh, was to do with the atmospheres of
32:37
these stars. And I kind of watched
32:40
the way the technology evolved,
32:43
uh, and all the buzzwords that. I mean, I
32:46
didn't understand the science because I've
32:48
never really dwelt on the interiors of
32:51
stars in any deep level. At least not as far
32:53
as the hydrothermal dynamics are concerned.
32:56
Um, uh, but the buzzwords that they were
32:59
using changed over the years and the codes,
33:02
um, the software that was being used to make
33:05
these analyses, uh, and so they're well
33:08
understood. And I guess it's a deeper
33:10
analysis of that that gives
33:13
rise to the idea that you get spits and
33:15
perhaps I can suggest the direction that
33:17
might have come in. Because normally when you
33:20
think of the atmosphere of a star, you
33:22
imagine it as something. The atmosphere,
33:25
um, is basically in shells,
33:28
different shells. You can imagine its
33:30
structure changes, but you always
33:33
imagine it to be completely spherically
33:35
symmetric. That you're talking just about
33:37
spheres. Now if you break those spheres down,
33:40
then you're going to get different processes
33:42
going on at one side of a sphere from you get
33:45
at the other side. And that might be where
33:47
these, uh, phenomena, uh,
33:49
originate in what Jim Fuller's talking about.
33:53
Andrew Dunkley: Fascinating. You can read all about it at
33:55
Space. It was presented at the
33:57
248th meeting of the American Astronomical
34:00
Society in Pasadena, uh,
34:02
and has been submitted to the Proceedings of
34:05
the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
34:08
So, uh, yeah, it's
34:10
uh, a fascinating discovery
34:13
and glad we won't be around to see all that.
34:17
Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
34:18
Andrew Dunkley: Uh, Fred Watson, we're done. Thank you so
34:20
very much.
34:21
Professor Fred Watson: Um, thank you, Andrew. It's been. Been jolly
34:23
as always and, uh, hope we can do it again
34:25
sometime.
34:26
Andrew Dunkley: Maybe in a few minutes. Who knows? Professor
34:29
Fred Watson Watson, astronomer at large. Um,
34:31
and between episodes, please visit our
34:33
website or our uh, social media platforms and
34:36
maybe uh, you can go to the podcast group and
34:38
have a chat with other people that listen to
34:40
the show and um, yeah, they
34:43
quite often talk um, about what we've talked
34:45
about and carve it all up between themselves
34:48
which is good. Uh, and you can cheque out all
34:51
our other stuff on the website as well.
34:53
Space nuts podcast.com and
34:56
thanks to Huw in the studio who couldn't be
34:59
with us today because he, he proved Newton's
35:01
law. We turned up so he went the other way.
35:04
And from me, Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your
35:06
company. We will see you on the next episode
35:08
of Space Nuts. Bye Bye.
35:11
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35:13
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