Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Cosmic Questions, Gravitational Waves & Dad Jokes from the Universe

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Cosmic Questions, Gravitational Waves & Dad Jokes from the Universe · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Andrew Dunkley: Hi there. Andrew Dunkley here. You're
• 0:02
  listening to or watching Space Nuts, A, Q and
• 0:05
  A edition. Good to have your company. And
• 0:08
  coming up, we have got questions from all
• 0:10
  over the district. or maybe all over the
• 0:13
  planet. we're going to be surfing
• 0:15
  gravitational waves. Well, the question is,
• 0:17
  can we. But I'll elaborate when
• 0:20
  we get to that. the rotation of space time
• 0:23
  has come up, firing, lasers into space.
• 0:26
  And we've got a couple of jokes, which is
• 0:28
  nice, but
• 0:31
  they're so funny nobody laughs because we
• 0:34
  don't understand them. But, that's the nature
• 0:36
  of the jokes because Judd wants
• 0:39
  Fred Watson to explain why they're funny. So
• 0:41
  we'll get it. We'll get to that and much more
• 0:44
  on this episode of space nuts.
• 0:47
  Generic: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
• 0:49
  10, 9. Ignition
• 0:52
  sequence start. space nuts. 5, 4, 3,
• 0:55
  2. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 4.
• 0:57
  3, 2 dot Space Nuts.
• 1:00
  Astronauts report. It feels good.
• 1:03
  Andrew Dunkley: And he's back again. And he's reached a point
• 1:05
  in his life where he can tell. Great dad
• 1:08
  jokes. Great, great, great dad jokes.
• 1:11
  Perhaps. Hello, Fred Watson.
• 1:13
  Professor Fred Watson: yeah, no, I'm not a great granddad. I am a
• 1:15
  granddad, though. yes, and, with a new. A new
• 1:18
  granddaughter who, oh, we'll be seeing this
• 1:20
  week sometime.
• 1:21
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Professor Fred Watson: Excellent.
• 1:22
  Andrew Dunkley: It's very good news. yes. good
• 1:24
  to see you, Fred Watson. By the way, thanks
• 1:26
  for joining us.
• 1:27
  Professor Fred Watson: I was passing by, I thought might as well.
• 1:29
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I couldn't do this without you because,
• 1:32
  I would have no idea about some of the
• 1:34
  answers to these questions. But, we might as
• 1:36
  well just go straight to it. And our first
• 1:39
  question comes from sunny
• 1:41
  California.
• 1:42
  Rennie wants to know, theoretically, can
• 1:45
  gravitational waves pick up any kind of
• 1:47
  subatomic particles or larger objects and
• 1:50
  carry them for a certain period of time and
• 1:52
  drop them off as they get weaker? Kind of
• 1:55
  like a surfer catching a wave. Now, gotta
• 1:58
  tell you, in one of my science fiction
• 2:00
  novels, I did this exact thing. Although it
• 2:02
  wasn't a small object. It was a
• 2:05
  space battle cruiser that got picked up
• 2:08
  by a neutron bomb
• 2:11
  explosion which created a gravitational wave.
• 2:13
  But that's another story, and it's science
• 2:15
  fiction, so I could do whatever I like. But,
• 2:17
  yeah, that's a good question. can they pick
• 2:19
  anything up and carry it for a distance?
• 2:22
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, no. apparently not. I checked
• 2:25
  this one up, a while ago,
• 2:28
  and, so
• 2:30
  gravitational waves are a deformation
• 2:33
  of spacetime. And,
• 2:37
  objects, feel them, because
• 2:40
  that's how we detect them. The fact that the
• 2:43
  Shape of space changes slightly as a
• 2:45
  gravitational wave passes through. it's,
• 2:48
  basically a vibration of space time. and
• 2:51
  we detect that by. Well, one way of
• 2:53
  detecting it is by using two mirrors,
• 2:57
  four kilometres apart in the case of ligo,
• 2:59
  the, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave
• 3:02
  Observatory. two mirrors whose
• 3:04
  separation can be measured
• 3:07
  to, what is it? 1 10,000th of the diameter
• 3:10
  of a neutron, I think a proton.
• 3:13
  Andrew Dunkley: Wow.
• 3:13
  Professor Fred Watson: It's ridiculous. Yeah, ridiculous.
• 3:16
  But that's what you need, because the. As
• 3:18
  we've talked about before, the, In fact, I
• 3:21
  think we mentioned this last week, the
• 3:22
  flexibility of space is very, very low. It's
• 3:25
  very stiff. 100 billion billion
• 3:28
  times the stiffness of steel if you use
• 3:30
  Young's modulus as a yardstick. so,
• 3:33
  But space does vibrate. but, that's
• 3:36
  what happens. So it vibrates as the
• 3:38
  wave passes through, but you don't get
• 3:41
  surfed by the wave. You know, it doesn't pick
• 3:44
  things up and carry them with it. That's.
• 3:46
  Which is Rennie's point, I think,
• 3:49
  things feel its presence, they feel it by the
• 3:53
  vibrations that it sets up, but
• 3:56
  they stay put. And that's just as well,
• 3:58
  because, you know, the Earth's being
• 4:00
  bombarded by gravitational waves all the
• 4:02
  time. We really wouldn't want to be carried
• 4:04
  away, from our neat and tidy orbit around the
• 4:07
  sun by passing through.
• 4:09
  Andrew Dunkley: But, you know, what you've just done? You've
• 4:11
  debunked my book.
• 4:13
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, that's. I, wasn't going to mention
• 4:15
  that.
• 4:15
  Andrew Dunkley: However. However, I. I will. I will
• 4:18
  qualify by saying it wasn't, you know, a
• 4:21
  standard gravitational wave.
• 4:22
  Professor Fred Watson: That was the neutron bomb. Gravitational.
• 4:25
  Andrew Dunkley: Created by human action. So, you know,
• 4:28
  I might get away with that one, but,
• 4:31
  Yeah, So you did say they're
• 4:34
  hitting us all the time. Because I remember
• 4:36
  when we first talked about gravitational
• 4:38
  waves being discovered, it seemed like a rare
• 4:40
  event, but it's not.
• 4:42
  Professor Fred Watson: No, that's right. And in fact, you and I have
• 4:44
  spoken about the sort of background noise of
• 4:46
  gravitational waves that m.
• 4:49
  Swirling around, the planet all the
• 4:52
  time. and yes, it's just as
• 4:55
  well that space is so stiff, because
• 4:58
  otherwise we'd be getting rattled pretty
• 5:01
  badly all the time by gravitational waves.
• 5:03
  Andrew Dunkley: Nice. Well, okay, good.
• 5:07
  Other things can rattle us.
• 5:09
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, they can. And that neutron bomb
• 5:11
  explosion might, actually rattle us to the
• 5:13
  one you were talking about in your book. But
• 5:15
  that would be a shockwave, not a
• 5:16
  gravitational wave.
• 5:17
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, indeed. All right, thank you,
• 5:20
  Rennie. Lovely to Hear from you. Rennie's one
• 5:22
  of our regular contributors.
• 5:23
  Our next question comes from yet another
• 5:25
  regular contributor. His name is
• 5:28
  Rusty.
• 5:29
  Andrew Dunkley: G' day, Fred Watson and Andrew. It's Rusty
• 5:32
  in Donnybrook. Now we know that in the realm
• 5:34
  of physics, human logic often goes awry.
• 5:37
  Here's a try anyway. Thinking about
• 5:39
  the Big Bang, initially,
• 5:42
  no matter came out of it. It was, was all
• 5:45
  energy. And most of this was in the
• 5:48
  form of space time. Looking at,
• 5:52
  black holes, which is the opposite. This is
• 5:54
  matter going into a black hole
• 5:57
  after the event horizon. And when it finally
• 6:00
  gets to the singularity, it
• 6:02
  can't exist as matter. So it must exist
• 6:06
  as, matter's equivalent, which
• 6:08
  is energy. We also know that space
• 6:11
  time can rotate. We've seen, photographs
• 6:14
  now of frame dragging. And we know that it
• 6:16
  even exists, around the Earth. So
• 6:20
  we've got some interesting things there about
• 6:22
  space time. It has mass,
• 6:25
  it can rotate. So is this
• 6:28
  energy dark matter? It must also
• 6:31
  have a mass equivalence if it's got energy.
• 6:34
  So, if it is dark matter, could that be.
• 6:37
  Could it be the rotation of space itself
• 6:41
  on a galactic scale influencing the
• 6:44
  rotation of spiral galaxies?
• 6:47
  That's my question. Pretty difficult day.
• 6:49
  Okay, cheers.
• 6:50
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah. Rusty, you love asking
• 6:53
  these curveball questions. I know. I, think
• 6:56
  you sit there trying to figure out what to
• 6:59
  throw at us next. this is an interesting one.
• 7:01
  We have talked about the rotation of space
• 7:03
  time before or whether or not it does, dark
• 7:05
  energy is always coming up. And we spoke
• 7:08
  about a new theory on, dark
• 7:10
  matter in our last episode. And we keep sort
• 7:13
  of cross referencing dark matter and dark
• 7:15
  energy. But, yeah, okay, so, does
• 7:18
  space time rotate?
• 7:25
  The mass of space
• 7:28
  time, could that be dark matter?
• 7:31
  I think I precede that too much. But anyway,
• 7:35
  that was the guts of the question.
• 7:38
  Professor Fred Watson: So, the energy
• 7:41
  that the universe
• 7:44
  contained at first, was photons. It was
• 7:48
  electromagnetic energy, and
• 7:52
  they then basically collapsed into
• 7:55
  matter. So the Big Bang was very efficient at
• 7:58
  that process. when things cooled down a bit.
• 8:02
  when something crosses the event horizon,
• 8:04
  goes into a black hole, it
• 8:07
  remains as matter, even though
• 8:09
  it's now been squashed into an
• 8:11
  infinitesimal point.
• 8:14
  so the
• 8:18
  material content of a black hole,
• 8:22
  is mass. It's matter because it
• 8:24
  increases its mass. we know that mass and
• 8:27
  energy are related by E equals MC squared.
• 8:29
  Rusty certainly knows that. so,
• 8:32
  I'm just,
• 8:36
  I'm not sure I'm following the
• 8:39
  logic there. We do know,
• 8:43
  that, we've had
• 8:45
  this issue with the asymmetric,
• 8:48
  sorry, the unequal rotation of galaxies
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  clockwise and anti clockwise, that seem to be
• 8:54
  more one way than the other. And that has
• 8:56
  raised the suggestion that the universe is
• 8:58
  rotating. And it turns out if it rotates once
• 9:01
  every 500 billion years, then you
• 9:04
  can get rid of the Hubble tension. I
• 9:06
  think that's the bottom line there.
• 9:09
  And so, I mean, you
• 9:12
  know, Rusty's points are all well made. I
• 9:15
  don't think we get rid of dark matter and
• 9:18
  dark energy though, by those considerations.
• 9:21
  I think we're still stuck with puzzles that
• 9:23
  we don't understand.
• 9:25
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I don't think he was talking about
• 9:27
  getting rid of dark matter, but he was
• 9:29
  talking about the
• 9:32
  mass of space time being dark matter.
• 9:35
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, sorry, I'm using the wrong
• 9:38
  words there. I'm using my words.
• 9:40
  Andrew Dunkley: that's all right.
• 9:40
  Professor Fred Watson: Very loosely, yes, that's right.
• 9:43
  But dark matter,
• 9:46
  is, you know,
• 9:48
  it's clumpy. It's not,
• 9:52
  something that is equal throughout the
• 9:54
  universe, which if it was space
• 9:57
  time, it would be. I mean space time itself
• 10:00
  doesn't have mass. It's the fabric within
• 10:02
  which mass, within
• 10:05
  within which it exists. So
• 10:10
  I, think it's an
• 10:12
  interesting suggestion, as rusties always,
• 10:14
  are. But I'm not sure that
• 10:17
  works out. Throwing the equation of
• 10:20
  state there, that'll do it. Oh yes, Talking
• 10:23
  about that last episode.
• 10:24
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes. Oh, gosh, here we go. The
• 10:27
  headache worthy material, this.
• 10:29
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
• 10:30
  Andrew Dunkley: when you talk about the universe and space
• 10:32
  time, like space time, you said it doesn't
• 10:35
  have mass. It's just everything that's in it
• 10:37
  is what's mass? Is it strung
• 10:40
  out evenly across a,
• 10:43
  universal plane or it's not
• 10:45
  evenly spread
• 10:48
  360 degrees in all directions, is it?
• 10:51
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, it more or less is. But
• 10:54
  you're right, it
• 10:57
  changes from one place to another because
• 10:59
  math matter changes the shape of
• 11:02
  space time. so if
• 11:05
  you've got a lump of matter, then
• 11:08
  you're distorting the space around it and
• 11:10
  yes, frame dragging. Something, that Rusty
• 11:12
  mentioned. Frame dragging is the way a
• 11:14
  rotating object drags the space time around
• 11:17
  with it. But even if it's not rotating, it's
• 11:19
  still deforming the space time around. It's
• 11:21
  how gravitational lenses work. And so space
• 11:25
  space time is this crinkled
• 11:28
  pattern of
• 11:31
  irregularity that comes from the matter
• 11:34
  within it. And we think
• 11:37
  what we call the cosmic web, this
• 11:40
  entangled web of almost like a foam
• 11:43
  of dark matter that itself has
• 11:46
  mass and changes the shape of spacetime.
• 11:48
  That's how we think the galaxies formed and
• 11:51
  how we think we got the structure that we see
• 11:53
  today. but you need mass within
• 11:56
  space time in order to get those
• 11:58
  phenomena.
• 12:00
  Andrew Dunkley: Gotcha. All right, thank you Rusty.
• 12:03
  stirring the pot as always. This is
• 12:06
  Space Nuts Andrew Dunkley here and
• 12:08
  Fred Watson Watson just he's right next to
• 12:10
  me.
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  Now back to space nuts.
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  Generic: 3, 2, 1.
• 15:00
  Professor Fred Watson: Space nuts.
• 15:02
  Andrew Dunkley: Our next question comes from Dave.
• 15:04
  Dave's in Indiana, which is also the name
• 15:07
  of my sister in law's cat. if you fire.
• 15:10
  I don't know why I said that. If you fire a
• 15:12
  laser into space, would you the emission
• 15:15
  impart a force in the opposite direction? If
• 15:18
  not, could a broad beam be used on
• 15:20
  a space sail to effectively move a
• 15:23
  spacecraft? thank you, Dave. we
• 15:26
  have talked about this concept before.
• 15:28
  They're talking about experiments
• 15:31
  of spacecraft using
• 15:34
  interstellar sails or whatever you want to
• 15:37
  call them, being pushed along by
• 15:39
  laser. I don't know if they've actually done
• 15:42
  it yet or maybe they've tried it in
• 15:45
  small scales. I can't remember. We have come
• 15:48
  across this before.
• 15:49
  Professor Fred Watson: There was some research that
• 15:52
  was published and we talked about it on Space
• 15:54
  Nuts probably a couple of years ago now in
• 15:57
  fact it might even be longer which
• 15:59
  demonstrated that a light sail will
• 16:02
  actually provide an acceleration to a
• 16:04
  spacecraft. I think this was using sunlight
• 16:06
  if I remember rightly. But there's a
• 16:08
  spacecraft that was just an
• 16:10
  experimental one. They used a light sail.
• 16:13
  They could tilt it in different directions
• 16:15
  and it basically provided
• 16:18
  accelerations exactly what they expected
• 16:21
  from the transfer of momentum from the
• 16:23
  photons to the sail itself.
• 16:27
  so, yes. And the answer is yes. So there is a
• 16:30
  whole study,
• 16:32
  Dave, looking at this,
• 16:35
  the project is called Breakthrough Starshot.
• 16:38
  I'm not sure whether it's still running but
• 16:41
  the idea was to do a
• 16:44
  feasibility study,
• 16:47
  funded by a Russian billionaire called Yuri
• 16:49
  Milner, under the Breakthrough Foundations,
• 16:53
  ah, Aegis. They were basically
• 16:56
  doing a feasibility study to see whether
• 16:59
  you could use powerful lasers to fire
• 17:03
  photons at a light sail and accelerate a
• 17:06
  spacecraft to maybe half the speed of
• 17:09
  light, maybe a little bit less, but certainly
• 17:11
  a significant fraction of the speed of light
• 17:13
  by bombarding it with these photons
• 17:16
  all the time. to see whether you could get it
• 17:18
  to Alpha Centauri, or Proxima Centauri,
• 17:21
  the nearest star to our solar system, in a
• 17:24
  reasonable time. In other Words, you know,
• 17:26
  decade or so, rather than the
• 17:29
  60,000 years it would take using conventional
• 17:31
  rockets. So it has been well looked after.
• 17:33
  So, your idea is
• 17:37
  good and is already, you know, already in
• 17:40
  train and in fact has already been
• 17:41
  demonstrated by this experiment that was,
• 17:44
  carried out in Earth orbit.
• 17:46
  Andrew Dunkley: And if you were to fire a laser into space,
• 17:49
  there would be no recoil, there'd be no
• 17:51
  backwash or whatever you want to call it.
• 17:54
  Professor Fred Watson: I think that's correct, yeah. I need to check
• 17:56
  that, but I think that is correct, because,
• 17:58
  yes, you wouldn't want your blazer firing off
• 18:01
  in the opposite direction.
• 18:02
  Andrew Dunkley: It's not, it's not like firing a bullet. it
• 18:05
  shoots from shooting light. there's no
• 18:07
  recoil from a torch or a flashlight.
• 18:10
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, but yes, I mean, there might be.
• 18:13
  Yeah, I think that is correct. I think that's
• 18:15
  correct.
• 18:15
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
• 18:16
  Professor Fred Watson: You'd never detect it in a torch anyway.
• 18:18
  Andrew Dunkley: No, definitely not. I have just done a bit of
• 18:21
  a search and I found a website called
• 18:23
  planetary.org and this
• 18:26
  is an organisation that is working
• 18:29
  on light sail technology, through
• 18:32
  the Planetary Society. And,
• 18:35
  they're doing a light sail programme and they
• 18:38
  demonstrated that solar, sailing is a
• 18:41
  viable means of propulsion. And for small
• 18:44
  satellites, solar sails, use
• 18:46
  sunlight instead of rocket fuel for
• 18:49
  propulsion. they are one of the few
• 18:51
  technologies that could be used for
• 18:52
  interstellar travel. Their Light Sail
• 18:55
  2 spacecraft was, in
• 18:58
  space from June, 2019 to
• 19:01
  November 2022 and successfully used
• 19:03
  sunlight, alone to change its
• 19:06
  orbit around Earth. So that's probably what
• 19:08
  you were thinking of.
• 19:09
  Professor Fred Watson: It is, yes, that's right, yeah.
• 19:11
  Andrew Dunkley: So that's a website worth
• 19:13
  visiting, Dave, if you want to check it out.
• 19:15
  Planetary.org but there are
• 19:18
  so many other stories about lightsail
• 19:21
  technology and lots, of people
• 19:23
  giving this very, very serious
• 19:26
  thought. So, worth worth chasing
• 19:29
  up if you want to find out more about it. And
• 19:32
  thank you, Dave, for the question.
• 19:37
  Andrew Dunkley: Space nuts.
• 19:38
  Andrew Dunkley: Now, final question is not a question at all.
• 19:41
  Excep. It's a question that needs to
• 19:44
  be answered. Doesn't make sense. But, Judd,
• 19:47
  who, is in Brisbane, formerly Sydney,
• 19:50
  the traitor. Traitor, says. G' day,
• 19:53
  Andrew and Fred Watson. Heidi did a great job
• 19:55
  of, co hosting while Andrew was away. It
• 19:57
  could take years for her to bring her dad
• 19:59
  jokes to Andrew's level, though. Yes, that's
• 20:02
  very true. you know, there's no
• 20:05
  comparison to how bad I am. I, came
• 20:08
  across this zinger online. He says,
• 20:11
  if you use it, maybe Fred Watson could
• 20:12
  explain why it's funny. that always goes
• 20:15
  down, down well with my wife. He says.
• 20:17
  All right, here we go. Two spinal. spinal.
• 20:20
  Two spiral galaxies walk into a
• 20:23
  pub. The first one goes up to the bar and
• 20:26
  asks for two drinks, one for him and one for
• 20:28
  his friend. The barman looks suspiciously at
• 20:31
  the second spiral galaxy and says, I'm sorry,
• 20:33
  but I can't serve your friend. He'll have to
• 20:35
  go. The first spiral galaxy complains,
• 20:38
  why can't you serve him? The barman replies,
• 20:41
  he's barred
• 20:44
  deafening silence. Why is that,
• 20:46
  Fuzzy?
• 20:47
  Professor Fred Watson: I'm chuckling away to myself here.
• 20:50
  Ho, ho, ho, ho,
• 20:53
  ho, ho. So, it's really interesting.
• 20:55
  There's three different, three different
• 20:59
  uses of the word bar here. Ah,
• 21:03
  the bar. The barman's got, and
• 21:06
  a bar being something that prevents
• 21:08
  you from doing something new Bard. But also,
• 21:12
  we talk about spiral galaxies having a bar.
• 21:15
  Andrew Dunkley: I kind of figured it was something.
• 21:16
  Professor Fred Watson: Like that by that sort of bar. think of a
• 21:19
  chocolate bar this time.
• 21:22
  spiral galaxies that rather than
• 21:25
  just having a central bulge with
• 21:28
  spiral arms coming from them, they've got the
• 21:30
  central bulge, but they've also got a bar
• 21:32
  across. And the spiral arms start with the.
• 21:35
  From the ends of the bar. indeed. Our own
• 21:38
  galaxy has one which has been observed and
• 21:41
  measured by the Gaia spacecraft and many
• 21:43
  others. So our galaxy has one. We sort of
• 21:45
  look at it sideways from our vantage point,
• 21:48
  or obliquely, if I can put it that way.
• 21:52
  it's a, you know,
• 21:55
  it's a phenomenon that is very common
• 21:58
  among galaxies. We, call them barred
• 22:00
  spirals.
• 22:01
  Andrew Dunkley: There you are.
• 22:02
  Professor Fred Watson: They are spirals. So your friends are bad.
• 22:06
  Your friend's bad. That's because he's a bad
• 22:07
  spiral. Sorry, it
• 22:10
  took a long time to get that through. No.
• 22:13
  Andrew Dunkley: Well, it certainly required
• 22:15
  explanation. I'm sure some people immediately
• 22:17
  went, oh, yeah, I get it. but, others
• 22:20
  like myself would have gone, I don't. Yeah,
• 22:22
  I'm scratching my head. although it's
• 22:24
  prompted another dad joke. You ready for
• 22:26
  this, Judd? so the Milky
• 22:29
  Way can't. Here we go.
• 22:32
  Is non alcoholic. Because it's. It's
• 22:35
  barred.
• 22:37
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, it's bad spiral.
• 22:39
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah. Terrible,
• 22:42
  horrible joke. thanks, Judd. Oh, he had a
• 22:45
  bonus joke. the. The bartender says,
• 22:47
  I don't serve anyone. Faster than light,
• 22:51
  a neutrino walks into the bar.
• 22:55
  Why is that funny?
• 22:56
  Professor Fred Watson: So that was when, it's a story.
• 22:59
  It's quite an entertaining story, which we
• 23:01
  covered. This is going back maybe even a
• 23:03
  decade, right? there is A particle
• 23:06
  detector at Gran Sasso in Italy,
• 23:09
  northern Italy, which detected
• 23:11
  neutrinos that were being emitted by the
• 23:14
  Large Hadron Collider on the French Swiss
• 23:16
  border. Now, I remember neutrinos barely
• 23:18
  interact with anything, so they travel
• 23:20
  through rock, cheerfully go right through
• 23:22
  the, Earth, no problem. But the,
• 23:26
  problem was these neutrinos
• 23:29
  seemed to arrive at Gran Sasso,
• 23:32
  in a time that was less than what it would
• 23:35
  take them if they were travelling at the
• 23:36
  speed of light, which is about the speed that
• 23:38
  they do travel. They travel very close to the
• 23:40
  speed of light.
• 23:40
  Andrew Dunkley: Right.
• 23:41
  Professor Fred Watson: And so, this was,
• 23:44
  it really hit the headlines big time. Faster
• 23:47
  than light neutrinos. And,
• 23:50
  you know, people commented on it. There were
• 23:53
  relativist theories, people
• 23:56
  digging up what could be going on here. They
• 23:59
  were all trying to think of how the theory of
• 24:01
  relativity could be modified to accept
• 24:04
  this, to make it work. And a few other people
• 24:07
  were saying, I bet it goes away. I bet
• 24:08
  there's something wrong with the equipment.
• 24:10
  About a month after that
• 24:14
  experiment had been reported,
• 24:16
  they fessed up at Gran Sasso that they had
• 24:19
  discovered a faulty connector.
• 24:22
  and it was that faulty connector, that
• 24:24
  was giving the, mistaken
• 24:27
  impression that these neutrinos was
• 24:29
  travelling faster than the speed of light.
• 24:30
  It's to do with their clocking. And it was
• 24:33
  so embarrassing that the director is.
• 24:36
  He resigned to. Resigned, yeah.
• 24:38
  Andrew Dunkley: Wow. I mean, we've, we've talked
• 24:41
  about certain gaffes in
• 24:44
  science, discoveries, etc in the past, but
• 24:46
  that, that's a, that's a big price to pay,
• 24:49
  isn't it?
• 24:49
  Professor Fred Watson: It is, yeah. Yeah. He was, I think he felt
• 24:51
  that, he'd have put Italy on the scientific
• 24:54
  map for the wrong reasons because they had a
• 24:56
  faulty connector.
• 24:57
  But it does remind me of another joke that
• 24:59
  was going on round about the same time. This
• 25:01
  was back in 2012 when the Higgs boson was
• 25:04
  discovered, which I always
• 25:07
  liked. and it's very quick. A Higgs
• 25:10
  boson walks into a bar
• 25:12
  and. No, let me start again.
• 25:15
  That's the wrong joke. Wrong
• 25:18
  joke.
• 25:18
  Andrew Dunkley: That was funny.
• 25:19
  Professor Fred Watson: That was funny. That was good, wasn't it? A
• 25:21
  Higgs boson, a Higgs boson walks into a
• 25:24
  church and the priest says, I'm
• 25:27
  sorry, we don't allow Higgs bosons into this
• 25:29
  church. And the Higgs boson said, well, how
• 25:31
  do you have mass there, then?
• 25:33
  Andrew Dunkley: Love it. I have heard that before.
• 25:36
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, I'm sure you have, yeah. Was doing the
• 25:38
  round.
• 25:39
  Andrew Dunkley: I've got a, somewhat spacey joke because,
• 25:41
  GPS operates using global positioning
• 25:44
  satellites. I'm going to
• 25:47
  buy you one of these, Fred Watson. This is, a
• 25:49
  GPS navigation system for seniors.
• 25:53
  Professor Fred Watson: Okay.
• 25:54
  Andrew Dunkley: It, not only tells you where to
• 25:57
  go, is how to get there. It tells
• 25:59
  you why you wanted to go there in the first
• 26:02
  place.
• 26:04
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's a good one. It probably needs to
• 26:07
  tell you where you've come from as well and
• 26:09
  how to get back. I'm, not
• 26:12
  quite at that stage yet. My GPS gets used
• 26:15
  a lot and I always know why I'm going there.
• 26:18
  Although sometimes I do wonder.
• 26:20
  Andrew Dunkley: Well, it's reached a point where we wonder
• 26:22
  how we dealt without.
• 26:23
  Professor Fred Watson: It is amazing, isn't it?
• 26:25
  Andrew Dunkley: We used to have those big, thick roadmap
• 26:27
  books in the car.
• 26:29
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. I used to have them on the passenger
• 26:32
  seat with page markers in them so I
• 26:35
  could, you know, when I got to that end of.
• 26:37
  End of one map, I could turn it over and find
• 26:40
  where I was on the next. Terribly dangerous.
• 26:42
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, the way it was. You're not allowed to
• 26:45
  touch your phone in a car, but you can read a
• 26:46
  book.
• 26:48
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
• 26:50
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes. Yeah, it's, it's. Yeah.
• 26:52
  And, for all you young people, they used. It
• 26:55
  was made of paper with coloured maps
• 26:58
  inside. It was very, very.
• 27:01
  Professor Fred Watson: Some of them anyway.
• 27:02
  Andrew Dunkley: And in.
• 27:02
  Professor Fred Watson: Great.
• 27:03
  Andrew Dunkley: And instead of it following you along on your
• 27:05
  phone, you just ran your finger along the red
• 27:08
  line. Okay, I gotta turn left there.
• 27:11
  Yes, all right, we're done. Fred Watson,
• 27:13
  thank you so much.
• 27:15
  Professor Fred Watson: It's a pleasure. and we will talk again soon,
• 27:18
  I hope.
• 27:18
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, yes. I think I've got one more recording
• 27:20
  session before I head off and hand over to
• 27:22
  Heidi again for a while. But, I
• 27:25
  will be reporting in from my various
• 27:27
  destinations around the world. So, we'll,
• 27:30
  tell you more about that down the track.
• 27:32
  Don't forget to visit us online too, because
• 27:33
  we need some more questions. we are
• 27:35
  desperately short, as it turns out. Cleaning
• 27:37
  out the closet of questions was probably a
• 27:40
  bad idea. But anyway, it got done.
• 27:42
  SpaceNutspodcast, uh.com Space Nuts
• 27:45
  IO is where you can send us your questions on
• 27:48
  the AMA link, audio or text. Either
• 27:51
  way, tell us who you are and where you're
• 27:53
  from. We love to know that. And, Huw in the
• 27:56
  studio. well, I think you'll know where this
• 27:58
  is going. He couldn't be with us today
• 28:00
  because he's barred and
• 28:03
  from. From me, Andrew Dunkley.
• 28:06
  Thanks for your company. We'll see you on the
• 28:08
  next episode. Goodbye.
• 28:11
  Generic: You've been listening to the Space Nuts.
• 28:14
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  Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
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• 28:21
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  demand at bitesz.com This has been another
• 28:26
  quality podcast production from
• 28:28
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• 28:30
  Andrew Dunkley: I love getting a Wait for this one. A barb in
• 28:34
  Professor Fred Watson: The good ones. Yes, I like that too. You
• 28:36
  should have. Should have thrown that in
• 28:37
  somewhere.
• 28:38
  Andrew Dunkley: Well, I haven't stopped recording yet, but
• 28:39
  I'm going to press stop now.