Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #427: Martian Mysteries & Space Health: Unveiling Cosmic Secrets

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#427: Martian Mysteries & Space Health: Unveiling Cosmic Secrets · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Hi there, Thanks again for joining us. This is Space Nuts. My
0:03
name is Andrew Dunkley, looking forward to your company. For the next little
0:06
while. Will we be talking astronomy in space science. And on this episode
0:12
we've found a weird rock on Mars. It just sort of stands out like
0:17
a pustule on a face and that's kind of what it looks like. Also
0:22
an unusual side effect to space travel, and it's a positive one sort of.
0:28
And the James Web Space Telescope in the news again it's spotted an asteroid
0:32
collision. We'll talk about all of that soon on Space Nuts. Fifteen second
0:39
is in channel ten nine ignition sequence Space Nuts side or three two Space Nurse
0:51
as and I report it Bills good and here to unravel it all is Professor
0:56
Fred Watson, astronomer at Larch. Hello Fred, Hello Andrew. Not very
1:02
large at the moment. I'm sitting at home, but I'll be last see.
1:07
Yes, it's good to see. I've just come back from a little
1:14
sojourn to China and had a fabulous time and what a lovely country, beautiful
1:19
people, really nice people. And it was the one of the time frames
1:26
we were there was the weekend of a public holiday and national public holiday,
1:29
the dragon Boat Festival. They basically shut down everything for the week and it
1:37
brings people from the far north of China down into the big cities. And
1:41
we were warned that a lot of them have never seen Westerners in real life
1:45
before, and we could expect some weird interactions. And sure enough, especially
1:52
people like my wife who were blue eyed and blonde, got mobbed, absolutely
1:56
mobbed. Photos. Yeah, there was one stage there, she's sitting down
2:00
and three women just converged on and sat down, hugged her and got their
2:04
photo taken. And at one point, this is hilarious, they pushed one
2:08
of the men who was a bit too shy over to sit with my wife
2:13
for a photo. It was amazing. Yeah, and sneaky photos being taken
2:19
of us all the time as we travel around the country. Yeah, you
2:23
don't think about it, really, you're so used to the way things are
2:27
with us. Everybody knows everybody kind of, But in China there's still a
2:31
lot of people who've never seen a white person upfront. And yeah, it
2:38
really excited them. It's nice to be not to be able to excite people
2:43
for some reason or another, but to a terrific trip. Got to see
2:46
so much, climbed the Great Wall, nearly killed me. Went to Tianneman
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Square just after the anniversary of that fateful Day in nineteen eighty nine. Security
2:57
was very tight, but what an amazing place. And I went to the
3:00
terra Cotta Warriors Fred which was an optional tour, and I thought, we're
3:04
here, we can't not do it. And it was the best thing I
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did. It's just, you know, we were gobsmacked. It was like
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a rugby scrum of twenty thousand people to get in there and have a look.
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But it's just just a maze. It just a maze. It's enclosed
3:23
in the building, isn't it the site? Yeah, and this is fully
3:27
excavated. Now, No, that's just one pit of three that they've opened
3:34
up. It's the biggest. It's probably an area the size of a soccer
3:38
stadium that's undercover with all the soldiers lined up in the pits. But they
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told us there are six hundred of those pits surrounding the tomb of the Emperor.
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So yeah, there's still a lot to discover out there. Incredible,
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extraordinary, Yes, lovely people and I think one of our favorite nights was
4:01
going out to have a meal and finding a place called a hot pot where
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it's like a sushi train. The food just goes around on a conveyor belt,
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but you've got to cook it yourself. And we didn't have a clue
4:13
what to do. And no, it spoke English, and the family next
4:15
to us was so lovely and helpful, and we talked with Google Translate and
4:20
it worked over there, believe it or not, because Google is not usually
4:24
something that works in China, but we had a terrific time. Terrific time.
4:30
Highly recommend it. Ah, Now, Fred, we better get down
4:33
to business. They found a weird rock on Mars, and this is another
4:39
discovery by the rover that's basically wandering around looking for science of past life on
4:47
Mars, but it's looking at rocks as well. And this is a curious
4:51
discovery because it sort of stands out like a sore thumb or a pimple.
4:57
This one really remarkable when you see the image that's come back. It's the
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Perseverance Rover, which is at Jesuro Crater and it's been exploring the river delta
5:12
that used to represent flow of water into the crater probably three billion years or
5:17
so ago, and there's a remarkable image that's been sent back by Perseverance which
5:24
shows sort of a hillside which is strewn with boulders, all of which are
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dark in color, except one that stands out vividly as being much much lighter
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in shade. And it's actually textured as well. It's not just it's not
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just sort of white looking, but it's got textured through it. And it
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has been identified as something called a north of site I hope I'm saying it
5:53
right, and north of side, which is a rock that's currently found or
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that we believe has come from the crust of a rocky planet, fairly deep
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in the crust. Now, these things are quite common. An AUTHO site
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is quite common on Earth and on the Moon as well, but I thought
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to be very rare elsewhere in the Solar System. And so this has certainly
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caused, you know, a great deal of interest among the Perseverance mission controllers,
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and it's basically one that will be the subject of further research, although
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curiously what they haven't done is gone up to it and taken samples of the
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rock, and that is because the mission team believes that there will be more
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of these An author site in the rim of the Jesuro Crater, which is
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kind of where they're heading for, and so they expect to see many more
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of them. And the reason for that, Andrew, is that if these
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things are rocks that have come from fairly deep in the crust of Mars.
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The Jesuro Crater is an impact crater. It's an ancient impact crater which was
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caused by probably a small asteroid hitting the surface of Mars maybe three point five
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getting on for four billion years ago, And the thinking is that they're likely
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to find these remnant rocks from the crust around the rim of the crater.
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So rather than sort of spend time analyzing this particular one, they are expecting
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to see more as they traverse up the rim of the crater. But if
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they don't, they'll come back and have a look at this author site,
7:56
which by the way, has been given the name of I Took Up Point,
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which is one of the landmarks of the Grand Canyon. Ah. Of
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course, well, that makes that makes perfect sense. It does stand out.
8:09
I mean, when you look at the landscape, the soil is or
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the regolith is red. The rocks are mainly reddish to grayish, but this
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one is white. It looks like a big hunk of chalk, really it
8:22
does. It's actually a minerraal call Feldspar, which is one well known on
8:26
Earth linked to lava flows, and it's white because of its rich silica content.
8:35
The other ones are probably basalts, the darker rocks. But the yes,
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as I said, the north site is Feldspar. Well, ba'sal that's
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like, that's as common as dirt, isn't it. Well, it is
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dirt. That's what makes dirt. Yeah, when it's worn down, it
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turns into dirt. So yeah, and of course basalts rock, yeah yeah,
9:01
yeah, yeah, Well this is somewhat volcanic, isn't it. From
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what I've read, it's got a I read the definition, the granitic magmas
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appear to be produced by partial melting of lower crustal rocks. Yeah, so
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that's sorry, volcanism is involved, but it's it's it's definitely lava flow stuff
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rather than volcano stuff, if I can put it that way. Yeah,
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so it'd be really interesting, you know. Sorry, go ahead, Andrew,
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I was going to say. My first thought when I saw it was
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pummus. Yes, that's that's a really interesting comparison, because you're absolutely right,
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it does look like it looks attle bit more solid than Pummis, if
9:48
I can put it that way. Pummis, of course, is again it's
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volcanic rock that's been that's been exuded from the earth in water, and so
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you get all the steam know that was formed creating the voids in Pomis.
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So it does look a bit like Pomis, but perhaps only in its color
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that the close up of the rock that I've seen, it does look quite
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solid. It's got a hard edge to it that looks as though, you
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know, it's broken at some point there must be another half of it somewhere
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or something like that. Very interesting, and I think what, you know,
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what we should be looking out for is future mention of these and author
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sites when they are found or if they're found on the rim of the Gesuro
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Crater. Yeah, well, the funny thing will be not funny. The
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funny not funny thing will be if they get to the rim of Gesero Crater
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and don't find any and go, yeah, we should have just you know,
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we should have done that, should have done it, should have done
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it. You know, of course, samples of what you think of but
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they said, you know the comments that I've read, if they don't find
10:58
them on the rim, going to come back and actually start digging, digging
11:03
into this one, so we'll see more more of its contents. Yes,
11:07
indeed, and it certainly will give us a little bit more information to work
11:13
with in terms of the history of the red planet with white specks. Now
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let's move on to a really interesting story about space travel and health. Now
11:28
we've talked about space travel in the past and how it can have negative effects
11:33
on the human body muscle wastage, bone wastage, particularly with male astronauts,
11:39
potential damage to the eyes. But this story goes back a couple of years
11:46
to a civilian mission which was aimed at looking at the effects of space travel
11:52
on the human body, and what they discovered is astounding. Yes, it
11:56
is. I mean, the the bottom line is that, you know,
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space travel is bad for your health in some of the things that it does,
12:09
but you recover very quickly when you get back to Earth. That's one
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of the findings. So the backstory is exactly as you've said, Andrew.
12:18
This goes back to September twenty twenty one when there was a mission which was
12:26
carried out using one of the crew Dragon spacecraft that manufactured by SpaceX, and
12:35
it was four astronauts who were effectively space tourists. There weren't people who'd had
12:41
years of training and years of physical preparation to get them ready for a space
12:46
flight. They were just ordinary people. They probably had a little bit of
12:50
training. It was funded by a billionaire who was one of the people who
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rode on the trip. And as I said, they flew in crew Dragon
12:58
for almost three days, so this wasn't a spaceflight that linked with the International
13:05
Space Station. They were in the capsule for those three days. What I
13:09
didn't know until I read up on this, you know, to talk to
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you about it, I didn't know that the docking ports on the spacecraft.
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So you remember the crew Dragon a lot like the old Apollo spacecraft. They're
13:24
conical in shape and at the nose end there is a doorway and that's basically
13:31
what you essentially dock into the International Space Station with and can transfer astronauts through
13:41
the doorway into the space station. So that wasn't needed because they were never
13:43
going to be anywhere near the space station. In fact, they weren't quite
13:46
high higher in space I think about six hundred kilometers than the space station did
13:52
is space stations at about four hundred kilometers. And so rather than have just
13:58
a wasted door that wasn't going to be used, they had a transparent window,
14:03
a kind of cupola, a bit sort of miniature of the one that's
14:07
on the International Space Station, and so they got some brilliant views of Earth
14:13
from orbit. But cutting to the story itself, one of those astronauts,
14:22
which is I guess what they were because they were flying in space, whose
14:26
name is I think I'm pronouncing this correctly. Haley also know is a doctor
14:31
effectively or certainly has training in medical science, and she was basically the medical
14:41
specialist on the flight, and for the three days she took pretty regular blood
14:46
samples, biopsy samples from skin samples that were designed to show what the short
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term effects of spaceflight are, given that this was on a three day mission,
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but the fact that they had so many samples taken meant that there was
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a treasure trove of medical information which was brought back with these astronauts. And
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what's happened is that they were distributed to more than one hundred institutions all around
15:20
the world, in order to do an analysis of all of these things.
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And in fact, there was a kind of special issue of the journal Nature
15:30
last week which presented several papers which were related to exactly this. And so
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one of the things that these data show is that it's within a few hours
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of your being in space in weightless conditions, your body starts changing, and
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that those changes are fairly rapid. They're basically to do with the you know,
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the sort of the changes in your blood. There's changes to your skin,
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the proteins, your kidneys, your genetic makeup changes slightly, all sorts
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of other health indicators actually change very quickly. But as I mentioned minutes ago,
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something like ninety five percent of these changes come back to normal within three
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months. One that, and I think this is the one that you're really
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referring to, that it's an astonishing one is to do with the telomeres,
16:36
which are the caps on the ends of chromosomes. They've been likened to the
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little caps on the ends of a shoelace. So telomeres are, yeah,
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they're an important part of our makeup at a microscopic level, and they normally
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what happens as you age. The telomeres in fact, they shorten. Actually,
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fiz dot org have got a typo there in their article about this because
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it says their lengthen as you asually don't they shortened. But what happened within
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you know, almost hours of these astronauts being in space, they started lengthening,
17:17
so that you know, it's almost like time running backwards. The telling
17:19
me has actually started lengthening. And they you know, they're an indicator of
17:25
your well being, your longevity and things of that sort. So that was
17:30
really quite remarkable. When they got back to Earth, they started shortening again
17:36
the telomeres, and they shortened just rather more than they would have done had
17:40
they not gone into space. So while when they were in space there was
17:45
this reaction by the body that was almost like reversing aging, they caught up
17:52
with it when they got back to Earth. The telling me has shrunk back
17:55
to their original length. Wow, I mean yeah, I mean I'm looking
18:02
at some of the wording that's been used in the story, and you know,
18:04
anti aging and reversing the that sort of thing, which is probably a
18:10
little bit of creative license. But could this be studied? Could we learn
18:14
something from this fact? Well, that's right, that's exactly what you know
18:18
has come out of this, whether you could whether you could have I don't
18:22
know, face creams or something like that, or skin creams that would rejuvenate
18:26
your your body to its youthful appearance. I've got an idea. I've got
18:33
for an idea. Look, well, I mean this is happening in space.
18:37
Space is sort of a big void. So I think if we just
18:41
sold empty jars to people and said rub this on your face, we could
18:45
make a mint. The problem is, and I've struggled with this, Andrew,
18:52
is getting zero gravity into a jar that really is mine? Ricky.
18:56
Maybe you could take a jar up in the space open in space, then
19:00
steal it again and bring it back. What would happen then you just get
19:04
some of the moldy air from the International Space Station or whatever that you're bringing
19:10
back. Apparently MIA was the worst one, you know, the space station
19:15
that preceded the International Space Station of Russian venture. Apparently that was not very
19:22
wholesome by the time it was finished its occupancy, which I think was in
19:26
the early two thousands, late nineteen nineties. Actually, maybe they could use
19:33
the robotic arm to take the jar out, take the lid off then put
19:37
the lid back on and then you've got space in a jar. Yes you
19:41
do. Yeah, you've got a jar with a vacuum in it. But
19:45
as I said, the really important thing in this study is getting rid of
19:49
gravity, and that's a lot harder. Yeah, yeah, that's that's the
19:55
problem, isn't It's the zero G. Maybe the day will come years years
20:00
from now where they will have hospitals in space for people who gain benefit from
20:04
zero G or even the health resource. Yes, yeah, you'd never know.
20:11
I think that's a distinct possibility. But they were fascinating findings and if
20:17
you want to read about them, you can go to the fizz dot org
20:19
phys dot org website. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunpley and Professor Fred
20:26
Watson. Let's take a quick break from the show to talk about our sponsor,
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nuts. Check it out today. Now back to the show. Okay,
24:42
we've checked all space nuts. Now to our final story, Fred, and
24:49
this one is involving something we never talk about, the James web Space Telescope.
24:57
What I find really what I felt really interesting about this story is that
25:03
it has observed something a long way away that is probably very difficult to witness,
25:10
even if you're standing right in front of it. Well, that's right,
25:15
yes, so's it's a very clever piece of you know, detective work,
25:18
and that's kind of what astronomy is all about. And it concerns a
25:22
star which rejoices in the name of Beta Pictoris, which is a young star.
25:29
It's only about twenty million years old, so it's very much in its
25:32
infancy, and it's surrounded by a disc of dust. Now, dust is
25:38
the raw material of planets, and we took it call it dust, but
25:42
it is kind of in many ways better to imagine smoke, because that's more
25:47
or less what it's like. And it's circulating around this star. But the
25:53
story goes back actually to two thousand and five when another infrared spacecraft called Spitzer,
26:02
another of NASA's great observatories, that was used to observe Beta Pictories and
26:10
sort of analyze the disc of dust, and they found one section of the
26:17
disc that was very rich in a particular kind of dust silicates of a certain
26:26
type, which basically revealed that there was different sorts of dust in this particular
26:34
part of the disc of the dust disc, and that really there wasn't really
26:42
an understanding of what was causing that that you know, it was the analysis
26:48
of the spectrum of the dust with infrared, which you can do, that
26:52
showed these particular peaks that came from, you know, a certain type of
26:59
dust that was presented in the literature but not really analyzed in depth. So
27:10
now move forward to today and the James web Space Telescope which has looked at
27:15
the same bit of the Beta Pictoris dusty disc and finds no trace of that
27:22
earlier dust that was revealed by Spitzer. And so what they're suggesting this is
27:30
very very fine dust apparently that we're talking about here. What they're suggesting,
27:34
and this is scientists by the way, from Johns Hopkins University in the United
27:38
States, they're suggesting that what we were seeing back in two thousand and five
27:45
was the debris from a collision of baby asteroids which are resident in that dusty
27:52
disc. So actually probably not that small. The asteroids they think were probably
28:00
one hundred thousand times bigger than the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. So
28:04
they're fairly substantial, but they are still asteroidal. They're not planets. They're
28:11
small objects which are probably you know, the precursors to planets, because we
28:17
think that planetary formation something that starts small and builds up gradually. So what
28:22
they're saying is that the dust that was seen to in two thousand and five
28:29
was from a collision of asteroids, and the reason why we don't see it
28:33
now is because it's been blown away by the radiation from the star itself.
28:37
The solar wind from Be to Pictoris itself has cleared that area of this very
28:44
fine dust that was seen before, and that is why this interpretation has been
28:51
you know, has been arrived at by the Johns Hopkins University team. There's
28:55
not really any other explanation for why you should see these dust particles one time
29:00
and then twenty years or nearly twenty years later, find they've gone altogether.
29:04
And so yes, they have a cogent story to tell, and it's you
29:12
know, illustrates just how wild early solar systems are, because that's what we
29:21
think happened in our solar system. There's a gradual build up of objects,
29:26
but that was often interrupted by collisions between these objects, and you know exactly
29:32
like we think has occurred in Beter Pictoris, which just to type the loose
29:37
end it is. Yes, it's a long way away, as the crow
29:40
flies if you're walking, but it's relatively close star. It's sixty three point
29:45
four light years from our Solar system, so it's within the solar neighborhood,
29:48
within the Sun's neighborhood. You and I have talked about how our solar system
29:55
and the planets themselves were probably created early in our existence, and that happened
30:00
a long long time ago. Is it fair to say that what we're seeing
30:07
here is the same process, but we're catching it at a much earlier stage
30:11
in that Solar system, something we obviously could never have witnessed here. And
30:15
if that system goes on to develop intelligent life, doll not a witness to
30:21
either, but we have. Yes, that's right, there's a precursor.
30:26
Actually, just thinking back, and I think this is a story that we
30:29
covered probably a year or so ago. There's a star culled Formulo fom Alhaut
30:36
I think it's spelled, which also has a dusty disc around it, and
30:44
for a while what was thought to be a planet was being observed in that
30:48
disc by which telescope. I don't think it was the JWST. I think
30:53
that was before the web telescope came into action. But that planet seemed to
30:59
be swelling up, but it eventually dispersed, and again it was thought that
31:06
what had been seen there was the result of a collision. You have a
31:10
cloud of dust, that's that's the debris from something that's been collided with and
31:17
that eventually disperses and disappears. I think the headline we had was the disappearing
31:22
planet because it was originally thought to be a planet and eventually dispersed and wasn't
31:26
there anymore. That's what we talked about, and this is a similar situation.
31:32
What surprised me in regard to this story, Fred, though, was
31:34
like they've made the early observations of the collision and the follow up pictures were
31:38
only twenty years later issue and the yeah, the dust has gone. It's
31:45
yes, you don't. You don't think about things happening that fast in Solar
31:49
system formation with a collision, though, yes, I think you would.
31:56
You know, we we've seen colliding asteroids in our own Solar System and the
32:02
debris takes not very long to disperse. What usually happens is because what you're
32:10
seeing is lots of debris being illuminated by the sun. As that debris spreads
32:15
apart, it becomes less and less obvious. You can't see the individual bits
32:19
of debris. All you can see is the effect of the cloud itself,
32:22
and so it just gradually gets fainter and fainter as the cloud gets more dispersed.
32:28
I suppose if we just sort of set our watches and weighed another thirty
32:31
or forty million years, we might be able to see what it turns into.
32:37
Yeah, we might, Yeah, or maybe even two to three hundred
32:39
million years, we might see what is turning in. Yeah. But it's
32:45
certainly proving what a great tool the James Webspace Telescope has become. It's just
32:52
doing exactly what they promised. It's finding these things that we couldn't have hoped
32:59
to have seen twenty thirty years ago, and giving us so much darta to
33:04
work with and so much information. But you'd love to get you, you
33:07
know, your talents into the Jay James Webspace Telescope for it. No,
33:13
I don't think I'm clever enough to write a proposal to do that. What
33:16
I'd have to do is what I've tended to do for a long time,
33:20
has tag along with a lot of other very clever people who've got the ideas,
33:23
and I can kind of help it somewhere another. Yeah, gosh,
33:30
so much more to discover. But it's yeah, of course it's throwing up
33:34
new questions with all the things is at sees, but it's also coming up
33:37
with a few answers. That's right, And you're absolutely right what you just
33:42
said before. You know, it's so many different bits of astronomy, different
33:47
problems that we're looking at, different questions that we want answered on a vastly
33:52
different scale. Because at the same time as it's doing all this, it's
33:54
also looking at some of the youngest galaxies that we've ever seen in the universe,
34:00
whether early two hundred ninety million years you know, the universe is only
34:05
two hundred ninety million years old. It's an extraordinary tool. You're absolutely right,
34:09
Yeah, incredible, all right. If you want to chase up that
34:13
story, it is at the space dot Com website and definitely a great read
34:19
to observe something so far away and learn what's happening and sort of correlate it
34:25
to what our early solar system went through. Is yes, a it's a
34:31
revelation, like we knew what happened to us, but now we've got physical,
34:36
physical proof. Fred. That's just about it for another week. Thank
34:40
you very much. It's a great pleasure Andrew. Nice to see you back
34:45
home in Suly, Australia, and we'll talk again soon. We will,
34:50
indeed, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. Don't forget though, if
34:54
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35:12
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35:15
who's had a long weekend, and from me Andrew Dunkley. Catch you on
35:19
the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye, Spacenuts. You'll be listening
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