Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #389: Ingenuity's Incredible Martian Journey: Helicopter Makes History Before Bittersweet Ending

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#389: Ingenuity's Incredible Martian Journey: Helicopter Makes History Before Bittersweet Ending · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Hi there, Thanks for joining us on this edition of Space Nuts. My
0:03
name is Andrew Dunkley, your host, and always good to have you with
0:08
us. Coming up in this episode, we will be looking again at ingenuity.
0:13
It's all bad news but not really, Plus the slim moon Lander which
0:20
has landed on the Moon sort of, and we're going to talk about the
0:25
passing of a great in astronomy and space science. There's a lot on today.
0:31
We've also got a story about our Milky Ways dark matter halo and it
0:36
looks like it's got a weird thing going on with it that might make our
0:40
galaxy unique. Plus a potential explanation for the burping of Mars. That's all
0:45
coming up on this edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel ten nine Ignition,
0:56
Space Nuts NI three and I we bought it Nels good and joining us to
1:07
talk about all that and a little bit more later on is Professor Fred what's
1:11
that astronomer Tello Fred, Andrew, good to see you again, Good to
1:17
see you without dedlay in the sound. Yes, yes, long explanation,
1:22
but yeah, my one drive was sync to the hard drive and they hated
1:27
each other. Basically, That's that's what the problem was. Short explanation for
1:32
a big, big problem. But it's all sorted out now, so we
1:34
can talk in real time, not like we were on a not like we
1:38
were on a satellite phone for the last couple of weeks. Bizar. Yeah,
1:45
and everything good at your end of the world. I just thank you.
1:47
Yes, all going well so far. We I can't believe that the
1:52
year has taken off at such a high rate of nice. It seems faster
1:57
every year. Yeh, January is January is. I read a study as
2:00
to why the years go faster as you get older, and that's you.
2:06
Yeah, And the answer is because we've experienced most of life and we're not
2:13
sort of being welcomed by new and exciting things anymore like when we were children.
2:16
So for some reason, that just turns it into a very fast motioned
2:22
day by day in the second half of it. So life becomes routine,
2:27
is what, Yes, that's what it is. Yeah, yeah, I
2:30
get that. I quite like routine. Actually I like my other half who
2:38
doesn't, but which is why she you know, she's constantly conjuring up these
2:44
tours that we do to take people around to places where we've never been.
2:46
Well, if you want the year to seem like it's lasting longer. You've
2:52
got to bring new things into your life, apparently, yeah, yeah,
2:55
yeawise. Otherwise it just becomes routine and every day is the same. And
3:01
who would have thought space notes would become routine. Yeah, it doesn't feel
3:07
routine. And certainly something that, certainly something that wasn't routine was the situation
3:14
with the Ingenuity helicopter. Now we've been talking about Ingenuity the last couple of
3:21
weeks because it had an incident. They thought they lost it, they found
3:23
it again, but now it is end of mission, yes, because we
3:31
know that it's suffered damage. And so the story is that the just try
3:42
to bring up the right page. I kind of know what the story is.
3:46
Here we are. We've got a lovely picture of Ingenuity on my screen,
3:50
taken during its fifty fourth flight. And so yeah, so flight seventy
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two, which was I think we've spoken about before, was just meant to
3:59
be an up and down to check that's something that went wrong on the previous
4:02
flight with its excuse me, with its communications was okay. But it turned
4:11
out that that seventy second flight something went wrong, probably in the landing,
4:17
and it broke one of the rotor blades, the two rotor blades that counter
4:23
rotate on top of Ingenuity. One of them is now broken off. And
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there's an easy to find photograph actually of the shadow of the rotor blade taken
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by one of Ingenuity's cameras, the shadow of the rotor blade on the Martian
4:41
sand, and you can see the end of it looks as though it's not
4:44
there. Yeah, So that sort of essentially writes off the helicopter. It
4:49
reached actually an altitude of twelve meters or forty feet with a four point five
4:55
second hover, so it was obvi say in reasonable shape at that stage.
5:01
But then when it landed, it looks as though something went wrong with the
5:08
landing and it broke the rotor blade. And so it's now been deemed unusable
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after seventy two flights compared with the expected five. Astonishing. Yeah, and
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it's covered seventeen kilometers a bit more than ten miles in its couple of years
5:28
of flying. Actually it's three. Its first one was, Yeah, it's
5:32
nearly three years. April nineteenth, twenty twenty one was the first flight.
5:36
And you can actually go online Andrew and you can get the full flight log
5:42
of it Genuity, So yeah, it's not that's again not very hard to
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find. I I think it's just it's such an astonishing achievement that this has
5:53
been able to happen. That's been three really exciting years of Mars exploration,
5:59
and of course the less has learned from that because this was originally just a
6:02
technology demonstrator. It's you know, the idea is to just demonstrate whether you
6:08
can fly helicopter on Mars and attach cameras to it, and all of that
6:14
has been proven. Absolutely positive that the information that we've learned from Ingenuity will
6:23
be fed into the Dragonfly mission, which is another helicopter which eventually will go
6:28
to Titan. Schedule for launch not very far down the track twenty twenty eight,
6:33
four years time, sending a mission to Titan with a helicopter on board
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to look at the thick atmosphere of Titan and have a look at the methane
6:43
lakes and seas that there are there. It's in extraordinary what this will lead
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to. So yeah, all credit to Ingenuity. Rip. What a wonderful
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mission had to come to an end some time, But I think it's done
6:55
pretty well. Yeah, it's been fantastic. Now, wow, closely to
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home. Jackson has sent a mission to the Moon. It's the SLIM mission,
7:05
which stands for and I looked it up and now I can't remember,
7:10
but smart Lander investigating Moon. Yes, yes, now they had a bit
7:16
of a problem as well. And they have successfully landed on the Moon's surface.
7:24
But she's upside down, that's right. And what's more, we've got
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pictures of it being upside down or yeah, how does that happen? So
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the landing was twentieth of January. It's everything went really well, but obviously
7:44
during the last few seconds something went wrong with one of the one of the
7:47
engines. You know that basically they've got down with firing engines that are slowing
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down the trajectory of the spacecraft as it gets near the Moon, and basically
7:58
you want the velocity zero when it touches the Moon's surface. Something went wrong
8:03
with one of the engines and that seems to have tilted it over. But
8:07
it made a soft landing because they could communicate with it and what they couldn't
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do and I think we talked about this. The first hint that something was
8:16
wrong. There was nothing coming through the solar panels. And the suggestion then
8:20
was that something had happened that skewed the direction that the solar panels were pointing
8:24
in and they couldn't see the sun, which means yes, bad news.
8:28
And in fact, if you remember, do you remember phil I that was
8:31
the lander that went down onto the surface of Comet sixty seven P was that
8:37
its name? Certainly I think that Sharia muf Grass in Menko, which was
8:43
a little lander from the Rosetta spacecraft that had the same problem. It fell
8:46
over when it landed and landed in the shadow of a cliff, and so
8:50
its solar panels never got the light. So the story continues with slim because
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I think they shot their systems down with something like an hour of juice left
9:03
in order to see whether the spacecraft would survive the lunar night, which lasts
9:09
for fourteen days in fourteen of our days or thereabouts, and whether when the
9:16
sun rose again, it would rise in such a way that it would actually
9:20
light up the solar panels. And in fact that seems to have happened because
9:26
it has been restored. They've actually powered up. It surprised everybody. I
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think this was what day was this? It was the twenty eighth or thereabouts.
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They succeeded in establishing communication again and we saw basically images. Now the
9:48
way we know that it's tilted on its side or basically upside down is that
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SLIM also carried a couple of little rovers, one of which was the size
9:56
of a tennis ball. Oh wow, and sort of bounces along the surface
10:03
with camera. And I think it's that one rather than the other one.
10:05
I think the other one does something slightly different. But they're very very small
10:09
devices. They were obviously deployed after the landing successfully, and sure enough one
10:16
of them has sent back a picture of the spacecraft at the jaunty angle,
10:20
not the right way up on the surface of the Moon. Quite extra.
10:26
You can actually see the booster pointing up to the scar that's right, Yes
10:30
you can, yeah, yeah, it's amazing one to see see the jet
10:33
nos, yes, rocket. Will they be able to do what they want
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to do now that that's happened, They're still going to be able to perform
10:41
all the tasks, some of it, I think it will be, you
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know, I think it will. What they're doing is essentially doing, you
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know, powering up the various scientific experiments and seeing what they can what they
10:58
can do. I think they've done very well with an instrument that's called the
11:05
multiband spectroscopic camera, the NBC Multi Band camera, which essentially is a device
11:11
that lets you take an image but do an analysis of the exact distribution of
11:18
colors in that image, in other words, the wavelengths that are being returned,
11:20
which is actually a diagnostic for different kinds of minerals and rocks and things
11:24
of that sort. So yeah, they've got stuff working. I think it's
11:30
not going to be the full mission obviously, because it's not sitting where it
11:33
should have been. But the big trendh which I haven't mentioned, is that
11:39
they got They landed this within I think fifty five meters of their target landing
11:43
site, and that was the other real function of this experiment to try and
11:48
do a high precision landing. So didn't they call it the Moon Sniper.
11:54
I think the Moon Sniper was a nickname for this spacecraft, indicating that the
12:00
the targeting of on the Moon's surface was going to be much better than anything
12:05
that's ever been done before. They were expecting better than one hundred meters and
12:09
they actually got with it. They got to half that fifty five meters from
12:13
where they expected the touchdown point. That is again extraordinary. It's a really
12:18
really significant piece of space engineering. We're very, very excited about it and
12:24
a very short mission. They're not planning to do more than a lunar day.
12:28
Is that it was something and I think that was Yeah, that was
12:31
the idea, a lunar day. And it might be cut short by the
12:33
fact that the toil the panels are pointing in the wrong direction, but they'll
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do what they call yeah, and it might wake it up again the next
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lunar day, but they're not up banking on it and it doesn't matter.
12:45
But yeah, it's yeah. Well, you've got to give them credit for
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the resilience of their equipment. It's it's had a tough landing and it still
12:54
works, which is extraordinary. One more thing in this segment, and this
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is a bit of a sad story. Physicist Nobel laureate and a man who's
13:07
done some amazing things in astronomy and space science, Arno Penzies has passed away.
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Indeed, that's right. He was ninety years old due to complications from
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Alzheimer's disease. Were told horrible horrible disease. And Arno's name is absolutely engraved
13:24
on the minds of astrophysicists everywhere because he and a man called Bob Wilson,
13:31
who's still alive, still going strong. He's eighty eight now, they were
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the two who first detected the cosmic microwave background radiation, that's right, and
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they did it by accident. They were testing a receiver, a radio astronomy
13:46
receiver at the Bell Labs back in I think it was nineteen sixty four,
13:54
it was. It was at Holme Dell in New Jersey. They were doing
14:00
experiments with this new antenna and they found basically a continuous signal that seemed to
14:07
be coming from everywhere, and famously they tried everything to get rid of it
14:11
because they thought it was interference. And you know the most famous stories that
14:18
they found a lot of pigeon droppings in the antenna, so they shoveled them
14:22
out because they thought that might be what was doing it. But it didn't
14:24
go away, and it turned out to be the radiation of the Big Bang,
14:31
which had been predicted before that but was not detected until that nineteen sixty
14:35
four experiment. So they won together. They won the Nobel Price for Physics
14:41
in nineteen seventy eight. Such an extraordinary discovery, and it's actually what really
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put the final nail in the coffin of the steady state theory of the universe,
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which was in the nineteen sixties. This Big Bang theory and the steady
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state theory sat side by side and we didn't know which one was right.
14:58
But the discovery Panzas and Wilson really sealed the face of the steady state universe
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and said, no, it's not all right. So he was ninety.
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As we say in Australia, that's a good knock. It's a good milk
15:11
here. Yeah, it's a cricket reference for those who are saying, what
15:15
on earth are they talking about? Yeah, it's a good good innings will
15:20
be the way too. Good innings is another well pollball sense. All I
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can say is thank god we don't live for the length of an innings in
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baseball. Okay, you know your story about the pigeon poo in the antenna
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reminded me that when I worked for the ab SO, we went off air
15:37
once and we had to get a technician to go up to the satellite dish
15:41
to find out what was going on. He found chicken bones in the in
15:48
the in whatever I can't remember the name of the thing, the feed,
15:50
the feed probably Yeah. We'd had people up on the roof looking at the
15:54
air conditioner and they stopped for lunch and they decided to take the cap off.
15:58
The shut up full of chicken mates, and that locked us off the
16:04
air. Cost us a fortune to fix. But and then another another time,
16:10
another time it was a spider. The spider got in there and made
16:14
a where knocked us off the air. You just never know, do you?
16:18
All right, straw, This is very funny. It's one of my
16:21
favorite stories. This is Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here with Professor Vrad what's ace
16:30
MUDs? Yes, indeed, and thanks for joining us. Now we're going
16:36
to talk about dark matter, a topic that rarely comes up, but this
16:42
is a little bit of a change of pace in the dark matter story.
16:47
We're looking at our own dark matter, the dark matter of the Milky Way,
16:51
and it looks like it's it's behaving in a way that might make our
16:56
galaxy unique. And because it's because of the way it's behaving and what's happening
17:03
in the extremities of our galaxy is what I gleaned from this. What's the
17:08
story? Phraid? This is all very strange, it is, and we've
17:15
got to preface this by saying that anything to do with our own galaxy,
17:18
and certainly it's geometry and things of that sort, it's quite difficult to establish
17:23
because we're sitting in it. The Sun is one of four hundred or so
17:27
billion stars, most of which are in the disc of the galaxy, and
17:32
we are just one of them. So we're in a dusty disc and we're
17:37
trying to map the galaxy. We're trying also to map the part of the
17:41
galaxy that nobody can see, the dark matter halo. Why do we know
17:45
galaxies sit in dark matter halos because we can look at other galaxies and we
17:49
can measure the way the stars rotate. That was something that was actually it
17:55
was first noticed that the rotation of galaxies not making sense was first is by
18:00
Ken Freeman, one of our colleagues here in Australia, Ken Freeman of the
18:03
Australian National University, and then followed up that was in nineteen seventy I think
18:10
you won the Prime Minister Science Prize for that work. It was in the
18:14
late seventies nineteen seventy eight, if I remember rightly, that Vera, Rubin
18:18
and colleagues really brought it to the attention of the world's astrophysicists when they measured
18:23
the way galaxies some galaxies rotate. I discovered it didn't make sense. And
18:30
so what you do. You look at a galaxy. You can measure its
18:36
rotation, either by using a spectrograph and looking at the starlight because the Doppler
18:41
effect. If the galaxy is edge on or nearly edgeH on, the Doppler
18:45
effect will show you the rotation, and you can actually do it, as
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I think Vera did, by looking at clouds of gas with radio telescopes.
18:53
Either way, what you find is that instead of the rotation speed of stars
19:00
and gas in a galaxy dropping off as you go farther away from the center
19:04
of the galaxy, which is what you would expect if there was nothing else
19:08
there other than what you could see, instead of doing that, the velocities
19:12
stay flat. In other words, the velocities are always the same no matter
19:17
how far out in the galaxy you go. It's what we call a flat
19:19
rotation curve. And that's what led to the theory that galaxies are embedded in
19:26
a blob of dark matter, a giant dark matter halo. Now, probing
19:30
that kind of detail with our own galaxies not easy because we're sitting in it.
19:34
But with new technology, and in particular it's the Gaya spacecraft that can
19:40
measure the motions of stars very very accurately. A group of scientists based actually
19:52
in the United States. I think MIT is the main institution where these scientists
19:59
work. One of them is a I just I know actually Anna Freeball.
20:00
She's somebody I've worked within the Rave project. But what they've done is they
20:07
have very carefully measured the speeds of stars at a great distance is from the
20:14
center of our galaxy, in fact, going out to something like one hundred
20:17
thousand light years. Now, at that distance from the center of our galaxy,
20:22
there are very very few stars because you know, they're real outliers,
20:26
because we think the diameter of the galaxy is much more than one hundred thousand
20:30
light years. So if you're kind of doubling the radius of that and finding
20:36
stars there, you're really looking at distant, faint stars. They're difficult to
20:41
measure, but you can do. But what they've found is that yes,
20:45
there is a flat rotation curve exactly as we see in other galaxies out to
20:49
something like eighty thousand light years, but after that the velocities fall away and
20:56
you get a fall in the rotation veloc of stars. And the interpretation of
21:03
that is that the dark matter halo that actually controls these rotations is not as
21:10
you would expect, which is basically a blob that's more dense in the middle
21:14
than the outer edges. They're suggesting that the middle is less dense, that
21:18
it's like an apple with its core taken out. I think that's the analogue
21:22
that's being used in the paper that they've in, which is published by the
21:26
way, in the monthly Notis Is of the Royal Astronomical Society, so really
21:32
really interesting. A lot of this, of course, is due to computer
21:37
simulations, and I think that's the next step is to if you have got
21:42
a falling rotation curve, which is what they think they've detected, then you've
21:47
got to turn that into models of the distribution of the dark matter and try
21:52
and understand why our galaxy shows that and why other galaxies don't. So that's
21:59
you know, as you said, it's pointing to the idea that maybe our
22:03
galaxy maybe not unique, but certainly very unusual compared with the general number of
22:10
galaxies. The question, obviously is why why is this happening? Exactly why
22:17
is it so? And we don't know the answer to that. So I
22:22
think, I actually think we would well, but but people don't just say,
22:26
like I would, I don't know the answer to that. What they
22:29
do is they then look back at their models of galaxy evolution and how galaxies
22:33
form and see whether they can replicate the galaxy with a less dense center in
22:40
its dark matter halo. So it's not you know, throwing up your hands
22:45
and saying we don't know. The answer is we don't know, but we'll
22:48
find out. Could it be fraid that this is just part of the life
22:53
cycle of a galaxy exactly that's that's exactly right, So that maybe you know
23:00
the model the evolution of galaxies and the dark mater halos, over time,
23:06
they might be able to find that this, yes, is a normal part
23:08
of the process, that all galaxies do this, but at the moment,
23:12
we don't know that. Yes. Fascinating, isn't it? If you Yeah,
23:17
if you want to chase that up. Space dot COM's got a great
23:19
article on it, or you can go to the Royal College thingy thing Society.
23:25
Yeah yeah, and read read the whole report, but be prepared to
23:32
read fifteen thousand pages of authors. Yep, all right, let's move on
23:40
to another story involving Mars. And we've spoken about this a couple of times
23:45
before, and it's defied explanation, and that is that they've been detecting methane
23:51
on Mars and it's given rise to suggestions that it might still have seismic activity,
23:56
it might still have some kind of you know, volcanic action going on,
24:02
all of which have been sort of looked at with a giant question mark.
24:06
Now something new has popped up to suggest these verbs might be caused by
24:11
something else. Fred, Yes, that's right. Well it doesn't actually really,
24:18
it doesn't give us much insight into the origin of the methane because,
24:23
as you say, Angry, yes, that's right, methane could be formed
24:27
by a volcanic, residual, tectonic activity of some sort, or, more
24:33
intriguingly, methanogenic microbes. If there are methane burping microbes alive on Mars under
24:41
the surface, that is another possibility, and that's why it's exciting. You
24:47
know, because on Earth, most of the methane in the atmosphere is produced
24:51
by a life or it comes from cows. In fact. Now, the
24:56
thing about methane is it doesn't last long. If you generate CH four the
25:02
methane molecule, put it into sunlight or daylight, and it separates into carbon
25:08
and hydrogen. It doesn't last. It doesn't stick around long. So if
25:12
you find it in an atmosphere, you know that there is some source that
25:15
is replenishing it. And that's why this again, why it's so intriguing.
25:21
We've known about methane on Mars since nineteen ninety nine. Some of the detections
25:25
made from Well detections then made from the surface of our own planet because he
25:30
can detect it in the atmosphere of Mars. But several missions that have had
25:36
methane sensing apparatus, both on the surface of Mars and in orbit around Mars,
25:42
have basically given us ambivalent results. You find, for example that I
25:48
think Curiosity periodically detected a burst of methane in the part of Mars where it's
25:55
sitting on the surface, which was completely unnoticed and undetected by orbiting spacecraft.
26:03
Only in a very few occasions have these various different spacecraft actually both been able
26:08
to detect a single methane event. So why does it pop out like this?
26:15
Where does it come from? And what's now happened is a group of
26:21
scientists actually I think, led from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the United
26:25
States. What they've done is they've they've suggested that maybe the methane is being
26:33
sucked out from underground by changes in Mars' atmospheric pressure. Now, Mars's atmospheric
26:41
pressure is less than one percent of the Earth, so it's not much,
26:44
but it does exist and it does change well basically you know, giving rise
26:51
to weather on Mars. And so what they've done is they've done a simulation
26:56
of how methane might if there's methane in underground networks, you know, fractures
27:03
of between the rocks and places like that where it might lurk if the methane
27:07
is there. What they've done is they've simulated how it moves in those networks,
27:12
and it turns out that seasonal changes in Mars's atmosphere might be what actually
27:21
bring the methane to the surface where it's detected. And they've actually gone a
27:26
step further with this because they've predicted what might happen with seasonal changes. They
27:34
basically, in fact, I'm quoting here from the Universe Today's article, which
27:42
is that the simulations predict short lived methane pulses prior to sunrise for Mars's upcoming
27:52
northern summer period, which is a candidate time frame for Curiosity's next atmospheric sampling
27:59
campaign. So what they're doing is they're saying, there's Curiosity's sitting on the
28:03
you know, on on Mars. It's got methane sensing equipment on it.
28:10
We think that as the northern summer on Mars evolves, we're going to start
28:15
seeing short lived pulses of methane discuss So that's the you know, that's basically
28:22
what's happening. They're suggesting that the the Curiosity scientists should should keep an eye
28:27
out for this, and I think that would be great if we started seeing
28:32
pulses of methane when this you know, when these things are predicted, then
28:37
it would give us some confidence that those simulations are on the right line.
28:41
So they yeah, it would add a significant amount of evidence to their theory
28:48
that this is an you know, a Mars atmospheric pressure issue. It doesn't
28:53
answer the question as to why methane exists, and that's right, what's produce
29:00
seeing it? But yeah, mystery, that's right, That mystery remains.
29:04
But it's what it's saying is we can at least we could at least suggest
29:10
whether methane is lurking, you know, if it is in fractures in the
29:14
rocks and it's being pulled out by it, it's fake pressure changes and you
29:18
can predict that that will be a step forward, even though exactly as you
29:22
say, we don't know whether it's methanogenelic methanogenic microbe sitting there and emitting methane,
29:29
or whether it's residual volcanic activity. Space cares. That's what it is,
29:33
space caves. Blame the space cows. It's always it's actually a poker
29:41
machine for your Americans, a slot machine that does have space cares. I
29:45
saw it one day. Very weird, very strange. But yeah, well
29:52
we'll wait with interest. It might be more to report on this particular story.
29:56
Is space Nod's Andrew Uncley here with Professor Fred what's and s maare we
30:00
reach out at least? No, this is this is space and we do
30:07
encourage questions, and we've got questions from a few individuals today, the first
30:11
one being Ray take it away. Ray. Well, this is Ray Kruz
30:17
calling Troum Hollow out of California. Again. I'm we're thinking about meteor showers
30:25
there. They do the geminids, and I just heard your podcast about the
30:30
new one that may or may not have path on twelve. I hope you
30:32
guys will follow up with that. But we talk, we speak of burning
30:38
these bits of like probably sanitized particles burning up in the atmosphere. But it
30:47
occurred to me that maybe these things are not oxidizing, but they're vaporizing.
30:52
These are a small piece of silicon or iron or something popping up the atmosphere
31:00
before it had a chance to actually burn, as it were, to archidize,
31:04
it's going to just vaporize. So that's my question. I mean,
31:11
is it panominantly one or the other? Is it both? I mentioned it's
31:12
a little bit of both. I love your show. Thank you for taking
31:18
questions. Thank you, Ray. Yeah, So when we get into a
31:23
medior shower, is it oxidization or vaporization or both? Oh well, I
31:30
think raised rice is both. So yeah, so the vaporization, so you
31:38
basically it's the you know, this particle hits the atmosphere high velocity, feels
31:44
the friction of the atmosphere and vaporizes and then I think oxidizes, in other
31:51
words, burns and so so that process may explain why sometimes with with bribe
31:59
meat you see color changes. Often you see green, which is caused by
32:06
the excitement of oxygen atoms in the upper atmosphere. But but you know,
32:13
sometimes they're white as well. I think, No, I'm not a meteor
32:16
specialist, but I think I think a ray raises a really interesting topic,
32:22
and I think it is true that both those processes are at play in when
32:27
we see a shooting star a meteor, and we should He's right, we
32:31
should follow up on that predicted twelfth of December meteor shower. I should check
32:37
with the people I know who are meteor specialists and see whether there's any news
32:43
on that. And it may well be that there's still an analysis going on
32:47
of what's what we're seen on that night. But you might remember it came
32:52
immediately before the geminid meteor shower, but it was a predicted new one,
32:57
so we'll we'll talk about that again some later day. Thank you Ray for
33:00
the reminder. Yeah, appreciate it. Ray, And like Ray, you
33:06
should be aware that whenever they say, you know, there's a discovery in
33:08
astronomy, it happened a decade ago, it just takes them takes them a
33:13
long time to write the report with a quill and an ink. Well,
33:17
astronomers sort of, you know, a bit slawer to take up the new
33:21
tech. Sometimes. Sure that that's but I do you know your points well
33:29
made? There's certainly to get your data into the published record, what we
33:36
call the literature, it's got to be peer reviewed, and that's a process
33:40
that often does take the time, and I'm not surprised it's quite a hard
33:45
thing to do. I don't really do it anymore, but when I used
33:46
to peer review other people's work, you've got criteria against which it needs to
33:52
be judged, and you basically need to redo the research yourself to check whether
33:57
what they've done is correct. It's pretty hard work. Yeah, it sounds
34:00
sounds like a right royal pain. Sometimes they give you twenty dollars for it
34:07
as well. If you really lucky, nice area. Okay, thank you,
34:12
Ray. We will follow that up. I've written a note to remind
34:15
Fred to do his homework and I used a real pen. Yes, now
34:20
the same thing that's read. I hope yours is a good luck one is
34:25
too. Where you go two reds, I'll teach I'll teach you how to
34:29
use one next time. I down there. Now, let's let's go to
34:34
Rusty and Donnybrook. I love I love this question. This is a speculator.
34:37
We've got a couple of speculators to finish up off the show this week.
34:40
Rusty is suggesting a solar Pergola Bredan Andrew. Good morning. It's Rusty
34:49
and Donnybrook. Just been thinking about putting a sunscreen for the Earth out at
34:55
L one between a son and the Earth, and for a two percent coverage
35:00
it would be about eight hundred square kilometers. Just wondering if that sort of
35:07
thing using an opake membrane would be possible for our technology in the next say
35:14
twenty years and two percent, I think that would be enough to make the
35:20
difference we need at this stage of the game. So he could act as
35:23
a solar pergola, and they could tilt to let more or less come through.
35:30
Just wondering what you think of that idea. Cheeers guys, thanks for
35:36
usty. I assume he's talking about cooling the planet a little bit. Is
35:38
that where he's going two percent? I mean, what you're trying to do
35:45
is put darkness onto a spot. It would have to be well, it
35:53
wouldn't have to be actually no, it wouldn't have to be on the equator.
35:57
It would be probably between the topics, but it would move all the
36:00
time as the Earth rotates, because the L two point stays a big about
36:07
the L one point, which is what he's talking about, that stays stationary
36:10
in relation to the Earth and the Sun, but the Earth is rotating.
36:16
What I don't know, So you've got eight hundred square kilometers I think is
36:22
what Roster stays. It would have to be, which is a megastructure.
36:29
It's bigger than anything we've ever built. And I'd need to just do a
36:34
sum to see what the how what angle that would subtend at the Earth's surface,
36:39
just to see how much of the Sun's light is blocked out that.
36:43
The bottom line, though, is it might be possible. It might be
36:47
the kind of engineering that could be done. I'm not suggesting it will be
36:52
anytime soon. I think it's beyond us for at least a century that scale
36:55
of engineering. Right. The question is whether you actually want to do it.
37:05
You know, quite a few solutions have been proposed for the issue of
37:10
climate change that involved this kind of engineering. I think it's called geoengineering.
37:19
Basically, you're trying to you try to change the properties of the Earth by
37:22
building something or sticking something into the atmosphere. You know, there's been I
37:29
think it's half a dioxide that you can inject into the atmosphere that increases the
37:32
opacity of the atmosphere. The trouble with all those issues, all those suggestions,
37:37
is that they're potentially dangerous because like you know, we in Australia know
37:44
all about cantoads, which are introduced with the best will in the world.
37:47
Oh yeah, and now you know a hideous problem. So I would always
37:54
counsel against too many ambitious, over ambitious projects. But I do like the
38:01
sound of that one. I think Russi's thinking is good. Putting it in
38:06
the right place. There you've got a two percent reduction in the solar radiation.
38:12
That's absolutely significant. If you can sustain that over a long period,
38:17
you might need rockets to keep the thing in its right orientation because gravitational forces
38:23
would tend to disturb its orientation and it probably would not be sitting stationary at
38:30
L one. It would probably be in orbit around L one, which might
38:34
mean its shadow moves all over the place. Now that's not the issue.
38:37
Here's we're just talking about that, the reduction of the solar radiance in one
38:43
spot. And I'm not sure to what extent that affects the overall temperature of
38:49
the planet, whether it's a simple two percent drop or whether there are other
38:54
factors at play, which they might be. Not a climate scientist, that
39:00
mare of climate science. So yeah, it could be the case. If
39:05
it's anything like solar panels, it'll it'll lose a lot in the translation.
39:08
So it knows. Just a side thought to that theory of rusties. If
39:15
we built this megastructure, would that reclassify ourselves civilization? Oh yeah, so
39:22
the what's that called that? Yeah? I forgot what it's called as a
39:25
scale of classific Yeah, but we're at like zero point seven now, and
39:30
to be you know, the best we're going to be at one, and
39:34
that requires a megastructure, as it does. Yeah, maybe it's the first
39:37
step, and it would be certainly not that that really you know, that's
39:44
that's that that scale is very much one that's predicated on there being other Civilization's
39:50
course, fucking use the word. And we don't know the answer. No,
39:55
we don't not yet, well we might I never know it, that's
40:00
all. Probably probably that you can't rule out aliens until you've just you know,
40:06
not ruled them out by discovering one civilization. Okay, thanks Rusty.
40:13
And finally we are going to get another what if from Duncan. Hello Duncan
40:22
here from Weymouth in the UK. Question that come to mind with research going
40:30
on on Mars and Venus, would it be possible to make it easier in
40:37
the long run to bring the planets closer to worth, maybe using some asteroids
40:43
in the oben transfer or bit something like that. So maybe move Mars in
40:49
a bit closer and Venus out a bit further. And also with that that
40:54
would hopefully cal Venus down a bit and wal Mars up a bit. It
41:00
maybe even we could set up some sort of siphon to siphon some atmosphere directly
41:07
from Venus on to Mars or something like that that would help terror form them
41:15
knowing for them at the same time. I don't know, just the thought
41:20
that came to mind. What do you think? Oh, go your way.
41:23
I bought Ace Space Nuts T shirt. Very nice. I've been wearing
41:30
it all about. Thanks for the good work, keep it up. Thank
41:36
you, Duncan. Bye, I want to I want a photo of him
41:39
with the T shirt. Yeah, we should do. Yeah, it's great
41:44
stuff, Duncan. Look, he's thinking way outside the box, but I
41:49
have it. I have an idea on how we might move Mars. Get
41:52
someone up there with a box of matches and just fire up that methane.
41:58
Ah, there's a problem with that. No, no message, no question.
42:04
Yeah yeah torch then without oxygen canister. Duncan's question is, Look,
42:15
it's great. It's great stuff. I love the way people think about this
42:19
sort of thing. And if if Rosty's speculation was mega engineering, what Duncan's
42:27
suggesting is hyper mega engineering or something even bigger, because moving planets is actually
42:35
very hard, indeed, because they're big and there's the big and they're set
42:43
in their ways. Because they're so old, so I think, and well,
42:47
that's very set in their ways. That's right. Four points four point
42:51
six billion years tends to make you a bit interested in routine, doesn't it.
42:54
Really. I'm not moving, Yes, I'm not going to move so
43:01
for terraforming, and as you know, I'm not a big fan of terraforming
43:06
because I think it's slightly you know, off the wall idea. But if
43:10
you were going to do that, I think there would be easier ways than
43:15
trying to move the planets, and in particular the you know, the high
43:20
temperature of Venus and the low temperature of Mars. Yes, it makes sense
43:24
because Venus is nearer the Sun that we are. Mars is further away from
43:29
the Sun than we are, but there's all kinds of atmospheric physics going on
43:31
there as well, and moving Venus to an orbit that was nearest to the
43:37
Earth would not necessarily make it any more habitable because you've still got this runaway
43:44
greenhouse effect. It's a carbon dioxide atmosphere, very very thick atmosphere. You
43:49
really need to fix that, and I don't think just moving its orbit would
43:53
be enough to do that unless you built a lest you built a really big
44:01
screen. Yeah, well that's right, that might be trick. So good
44:12
thinking, Duncan. Duncan's thinking is always good. And by the way,
44:15
Duncan, we've got some text questions from you which we will look out there
44:19
on the track. Thank you for them. Thank you for this what if
44:23
suggestion, And I think this one is perhaps at the more unlikely end of
44:30
the spectrum of what you could do. I think planetary orbits are You might
44:37
put it that they are literally set in stone because out of rocky planets that
44:40
we're talking about. Y's not thinking though. Somebody will pick that up for
44:46
a sci fi novel somewhere along the line, though I imagine probably probably you.
44:52
I'm still working on thoughts. I'm still I'm still trying to get my
44:55
audio book down for Parallax. It's just I have much time, and it's
45:01
a hard one to do because there's so many characters in it and I'm running
45:05
out of voice ideas. But anyway, we'll keep working on that. I'm
45:10
about halfway, so only plus better than starting. Only two hundred chapters to
45:15
go. Thank you, Dunk, and thank you Rusty, thank you Ray.
45:19
And a reminder if you would like to send us some questions. You're
45:22
all always welcome to do so via our website, Spacenuts podcast dot com or
45:27
spacenuts dot io. Click on the AMA link or the little purple button on
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45:38
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45:42
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45:50
We have plenty of those, and they've been staunch supporters of space Nuts
45:54
for a long time. And we so very much appreciate that. We're done
46:00
and dusted for another week. Oh by the way, next week's episode,
46:04
All Questions, All question episode episode three hundred and ninety. Nearly forgot to
46:07
mention that, thank you Fred as always, Thank you very much, Andrew.
46:14
It's always a pleasure. We'll speak again soon, maybe we will,
46:17
indeed, Professor Fred Watson, an astronomer at large, And to Hugh in
46:22
the studio, thanks for doing the tests this week. We were testing my
46:28
technology to make sure it worked and we got it all right. And what's
46:30
wrong with me? I said something nice about Hugh. It happens occasionally and
46:36
from me Andrew Unkley, thanks for your company. I hope you can join
46:37
us on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye Nuts. You'll be
46:43
listening to The Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or
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