Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / K2-18b, Gravitons & The Comet Conundrum: A Cosmic Q&A

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K2-18b, Gravitons & The Comet Conundrum: A Cosmic Q&A · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hi, there, Andrew Dunkley again the host of the Space
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Nuts podcast, and we are happy to bring you yet
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: another episode. This is a Q and A episode where
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: we'll be answering questions about the life that they think
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: they may have found. Possibly could be Dono on K two, A,
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: D and B, gravity and gravitons, the Swan comet and
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: hopefully not the Swan song comet. Boom boom and fake news.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: That's all coming up in this episode of Space Nuts fifteen,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Channel ten nine ignition Space Nuts or three two space notes.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: It sure does.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: And with me as always his professor, Fred W. Whatt's
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: an astronomer at large.
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: Hello Fred, Hello Andrew, Nice to see you again, must.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: See you too.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, still sort of getting back down to Earth because
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I mean two minutes with the last every day rank
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: so still getting over the jet lag, but that'll that'll pass.
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: Didn't get seasick, I didn't mention that before in the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: last I didn't get seasick at all. There were I
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: think we only had one day where we hit some
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: big swells and the captain came on and said, as
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: you can see, the seas are rather.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Busy today.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Those waves fourteen feet fourteen feet him in four ways.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: You have board with me at the time, so not
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: that you need one where I live, but yeah, it was,
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: it was. It was a good ship, very nice ship,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: very good staff. Had a great time. And yeah, I
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: won't go through all the things we did, but I.
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: Will point out one thing, nothing to do with astronomy,
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: but we've been to Las Vegas before fifteen years ago
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: and we were you know, it's a sensory overload men.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: A couple of days there and you just can't wait
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: to get out.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: It's just that it's just so in your face. We
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: went back this time, and we didn't say it to
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: each other until after we left, but we both felt
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: the same that it's lost some of its mystique. And
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: I put that down to the fact that a lot
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: of the casinos had all sorts of.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Things to try and get people.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: In, like the Magic Garden and dolphin pools and white
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: lions and MGM Casino had lions in the casino living
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: in I don't know, habitats that were built into the
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: structure of the casino complex. It was really quite impressive.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: And notwithstanding what the animal rights activists probably that's all gone. Oh,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: most of that's gone. You know what they put in
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: their place sports bars. You walk into a giant room
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: that has umpteen televisions covering the space of a theater
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: screen and just lists and lists of odds and a
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: bar with ten thousand different kinds of drinks and people
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: just sitting there betting on the whatever. Any sport you
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: can think of. Ice hockey I think was the flavor
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of the muss while we were there. Yeah, and we
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: just walked away and went.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Gee, that's sad. It's sad.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: It's just and the one of the big casinos there
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: called the Mirage is gone.
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: It's just gone.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: There's just flat ground there. They've completely demolished it and
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: they're going to replace it with a hard rock you've
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: heard of hard rock cafe. They're going to have a
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: hard rock you know. Okay, unbelievable, but yeah, anyway, that's
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: beside the point. We've got some questions to get to Fred,
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: and we might as well get stuck straight into it.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: I'm going to read them all today because I've been
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: away and I cleared the decks. So if you've got questions,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: send them in because I have absolutely wiped the slate clean.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: If they had a question in and we didn't answer it.
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: That's on me. Send me your hate mail because I'm
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: starting from scratch fresh material from next Q and a
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: episode onwards, So send them in via our website. So
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: first one from Martin Berman Gorvyn of Potomac, Maryland. Hello,
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts. That's what I won't do it author and
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: write extraordinary us about the recent buzz surrounding the possible
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: detection of life on exoplanet K to eighteen B. Specifically
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: do mental SULFI did I say that right? Which could
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: be a bio signature, and while acknowledging it's too early
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: to draw any big conclusions, but that hasn't stopped the
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: popular press. I threw that in not Martin. Martin playfully
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: wonder if life is found there, might they grant asylum
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: to a struggling American sci fi writer disillusioned with.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Earth away with words he does now.
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: I know, I know you covered K two A d
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: n B the other day with with Heidi, but there's
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: been has there been any more information about it?
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: I think what's happened is it's basically caused a lot
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: of serious reflection among the science community and the philosophy
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: community as well, who have muscled into this with quite
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: quite you know understandably as to what we're really doing here,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: what we're looking for when we when we're looking for
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: evidence of alien life. And I think there are two
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: aspects of this. One is, first of all, there is
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: still some doubt about the actual detection of these compounds,
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: these molecules, that there are.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Two of them that have been found.
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: They so the authors claim that the authors come from
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: the US and the UK. Dimethyl sulfide and dimethyle die sulfide,
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: those are the two which on Earth are products of
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: the environment caused by phytoplantum, those little microbes.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: That live in water.
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: And the authors of the paper have drawn a few
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: strings here. This is a world that's actually bigger than Earth.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: It's about eight point six times the mass of the Earth,
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: about two point six times the diameter of Earth. And
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: the authors believe that this is something called the Heyshien
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: world and the Hyshen world. It's a great word actually
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: is an amalgamation of hydrogen and ocean. It's basically an
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: ocean world with a hydrogen atmosphere. It's been called the
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: Hyshen world. We think they exist and the authors of
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: this paper think that they've got evidence to suggest that
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: K two eighteen B is actually a hyphen world. Now
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: there are other authors who've stepped in and said, wait
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: a minute, we think it's too hot for that. We
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: think it's you know, it's got volcanic activity and it's
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: not a world with an ocean at all.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: So that's a moot point.
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: But the detection of these of these chemicals, the DMS
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: is it's called and dmds the abbreviations for them because
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: it's too hard to say methyl sulfide. There are those
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: detections themselves are in some doubt because there are the
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: confidence level. Yes it's ninety nine point seven percent certain,
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: but that's not the pretty well one hundred percent that
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: science demands, and so there's still uncertainty about that.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: So that's one aspect.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: That maybe this is a mis identification of features in
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: the spectrum of the atmosphere of K two eighteen B.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: But the other side of it is.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: One of two people have pointed out that these chemicals
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: have been detected in the gaseous envelopes of comets.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Now on Earth.
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: Yes, they only come from biological activity, but where they're
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: going to come from on a comet whose temperature is
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: minus two hundred degrees celsius. It's so there's got to
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: be chemical reactions that are independent of life that will
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: that will actually generate these what have been called biomarkers.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: And so the question is are they biomarkers at all?
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: Or is it are we just at straws. Do you
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: know that one of the one of the articles I read,
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: I really like the term. It was something to the
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: fact that we've been hunting for needles in a haystack,
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: and is this just a particularly sharp piece of hay
• 9:16
  Speaker 3: that they've found, And that could be the case, very
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: nicely put. And so that's where the philosophers have come
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: in and said, you know, we really we have no
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: idea what alien life might look like, and to sort
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: of in many ways blinker ourselves so that we're only
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: looking for things that have found on Earth that are
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: markers of biological activity, maybe we have to be looking
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: much broader, in a much broader sense. Now people have
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: said this for a long time, but I think this
• 9:51
  Speaker 3: particular discovery has really heightened the concentration of a philosopher's
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: coming in on this. There's a very interesting article on
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: the Conversation and its title is scientists claim to have
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: found evidence of alien life, but biosignatures might hide more
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: than they reveal. And that comes from a scientist who
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: is actually a PhD candidate in the philosophy of biology
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: at Sydney University. So this is philosophy rather than science.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: But it's a scientific article, and it makes the point
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: that maybe what we should be looking for is not
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: life as we know it, but life as we don't
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: know it is, because it could be different.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, we've talked about that before that I suppose logically
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: make assumptions that life elsewhere might just be like it
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: is on Earth, but it might be so alien to
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: us we probably wouldn't even notice it exactly what we're
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: looking for.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: On the other hand, you know, the other side of
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: this coin is all we can look for is biosignatures
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: as we think we interpret them from Earth. So we've
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: got a few interesting steps to take here. So I
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: think that the K two eighteen B story has yet
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: to run quite a long way. I think there'll be
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: more observations of it, maybe with the James Web, but
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: certainly with the the ELT when that comes on stream.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: The thirty nine meter optical.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: Telescope that will probably give us a much firmer view
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: of whether dms and dmds are actually in the atmosphere.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: But the philosophy of what we're looking for, I think
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: is perhaps almost the more interesting aspect of this.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of the recent discovery that
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: they announced about the atmosphere of Venus. Yes, and that
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: was ultimately debunked, but I think it's been underbunked again.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Yes it was.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, but it's still very very controversial.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, indeed, but again that was phosphine, wasn't it.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: It was, But once again, phosphine is only a biomarker
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: under certain circumstances.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: And you know that's the thing.
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: It may just there maybe natural causes of it in
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: the in the atmosphere of Venus. It's the same situation.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: It was, first of all, a very perhaps adventurous identification
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: of a chemical that you've found because the data really
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: don't match up to it yet. That coupled with the
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: fact that there may be other ways that this this
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: compound can be can be formed.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: No, this is fascinating. I was just reading some of
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: the headlines of the of the major outlets that have
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: latched onto this story. And it goes to what Fenton
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: is asking us about it that one till last because
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: it's a favorite topic at the moment, so we'll we'll
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: get into that. But and that Venus story pops up
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: in the list of fake news stories. But it fake
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: news is a terrible way to describe it. That these
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: would probably genuine attempts to come up with theories and ideas,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and some of them miss the mark. So fake news
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: is I don't know who popularized that, but anyway, we'll
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: carry on, Martin help me you know who it was.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Martin. Great to hear from you. Different, unusual,
• 13:13
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• 17:01
  Speaker 1: to the show Murder space nets. Next question comes from James.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: We're not sure where James is, but I'm sure he
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: knows where he is. This is about gravity and gravitons.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: The Higgs particle generates the field gives other particles mass.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: Gravity is a property of mass directly proportional to the
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: mess of an object. In other words, why do we
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: need another particle, as in a graviton to provide gravity.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: That's a good one.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: It is, Yes, it is a good one, and certainly
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: the particle physicists do see these as two completely separate things.
• 17:42
  Speaker 3: The Higgs particle was proposed as being something that the
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: other particles needed back in I think it was nineteen
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: sixty six or nineteen sixty seven by Peter Higgs at
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: the University of Edinburgh, who I think he died only
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago if I remember rightly, and
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: I mean the graviton has it's still a it's still
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: a hypothetical particle, but but it's different from what the
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: Higgs does. The way to interpret the Higgs is very
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: much as the particle that as exactly as James says,
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: it generates the field that gives particles mass, and the
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: field it's like a force field. The way I read
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: a lovely interpretation of of of this that if you
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: imagine some you know, something like a marble moving around
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: in space, then it's it's moving freely and you you
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: don't really have anything to sense its mass. But if
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: you put it in a jar of treacle or honey,
• 18:54
  Speaker 3: then the treacle or the honey actually mimics the Higgs
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: field and it provides a resistance which is proportional to
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: the mass of the particle. And so the Higgs particle,
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: you know, this is my understanding of it. I'm not
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: a particle physicist, and I don't think I'm explaining this
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: particularly well, but it has a different function from what
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: the hypothetical gravity graviton has.
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Which would be.
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: Transmitting another field, the field of gravity that's a field
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: as well.
• 19:26
  Speaker 4: But.
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: Would have different characteristics from the Higgs particle providing the gravitation.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: I suspect James is not going to be convinced by
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: my explanation here because his question why do we need
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: another particle to provide gravity? All I'm saying is that
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: gravity is a different thing from the Higgs field, and
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: so we need another particle for it. But I hope
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: you will take that and perhaps, James, you know, follow
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: up on some of the on some of the stuff
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: you can find online that really talks about the difference
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: between these particles.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: I was just going to say, the first thing I'd
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: google will be what's the difference between the Higgs particle
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: and the grubbytot?
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: Done? Nut had time, But that's right.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And Peter Higgs died last year? Was last year, yea
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: April tenth, so just over yeares, Yes, much missed.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: He was a great man, Yes, indeed he was.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you, James. This is space Nuts. You're with Andrew
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: Dunkley and Professor Fred what's an Now A word from
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  Speaker 2: Now back to the show.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, we tacked a space nuts. Next question comes from Ted.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: No known location, no known abode. It reminds me, though, Fred,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: when we know I have this. This is not a
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: reflection on on Ted at all. But when we were
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, I was walking across the street and
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: there was a homeless guy in a wheelchair on the
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: opposite side, and I was walking straight towards him, and
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: he had a sign and next to a bottle for
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: people to put in tips. And you read the sign
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: and honestly, I can't say it because it is it's
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: got a nasty word in it, but it was something
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: word trump and you can figure it out for yourself.
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: But if you read with him, you gave him a tip.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: If you didn't, you just kept walking. So it's a
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: rich man. He had quite a few, quite a few
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: painfuls of change. But yeah, that's beside the point. But Ted,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Ted wants to know. I've been observing the swan comment
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: every morning for the last few days. Please discuss this.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: If you have not already done so, well, I'm going
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: to ask you anyway, Fred, because I was interested in it.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: What's the latest.
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's we haven't discussed it already, so it's it's
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: a it's a timely A timely question from Ted. Great
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: to hear Ted that you've been observing it, because it's
• 24:42
  Speaker 3: not an easy object to observe. It's it's quite faint.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: It's certainly below a naked eye visibility. Its full name
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: is C twenty twenty five F two Swans And it's
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: a morning object at the moment. I haven't observed it.
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: I am not a morning person because astronomers aren't generally
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: unless there's an object likes one that they really want
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: to see. But yes, it's it's an interesting object because
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: it's quite bluish in color.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: The the.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: You know, the the the observations that you can see
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: made with relatively small telescopes definitely give it a bluish tinge.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: It's it's got a tail that is very very thin.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: I haven't seen images of its tail, but I believe
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: it's it's very very thin, and it's roughly a degree
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: or so long. But good on Ted for observing it.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: It's it's probably fading, although not apparently fading as fast
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: as some observers have expected.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there are some articles are describing it as green,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: but different objects being different colors. Yes, from Johnny sent
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: me some images the other day of what was probably
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a metea or a meat or scraping our our what
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: do you call it atmosphere, and it was green, bright green,
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: But they're not always color.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: So that's from the oxygen in the upper atmosphere that
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: you get from a fireball or a meteor. And yeah,
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: I think blue comes if I remember there. I've probably
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: got this wrong. Carbon monoxide in a comet that might
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: be the green. I can't remember, but the color is
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: essentially it means it's telling you something about the gases
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: that make up the or the frozen gases that make
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: up the comet, because that's what they are, the balls
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: of frozen gas.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Green comets primarily due to a molecule called diatomic carbon.
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And the emission of blue light is it just says
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: ionized gases such as carbon monoxide.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so at least I've got that one right. Who
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: are you doing? Well?
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but I haven't seen the comic, but thank you
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: very much for raising it with Space And it was
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: just nice to have a mention of it too.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: We've had We've had.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Quite a glut of comets lately, haven't Yeah, it's not
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: been bad, that's right, and especially there's big ones that
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: threaten us. But anyway, we'll not go there. Thank you, Ted,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Lovely to hear from you. Finally, we're going to discuss
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: something that has been brought up by Fenton in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: I've been an enthusiastic follow of your podcast for several
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: years and have no doubt about the quality of your knowledge.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I was laughing at myself then analysis and conclusions which
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: you reached during the discussions, even when you infer I
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: don't know he's talking about you there. I just came
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: across the following lay person article, which voices an opinion
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: on sensational results which make it into the popular press.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Several examples pertain to astronomy and astrophysics. Is it worth
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: commenting on this phenomenon in your podcasts that comes from Fenton?
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: Thank you, Fenton. Fenton's a regular lovely to hear from you.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: This is something Johnty Horner talked about while he filled
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: in for you a couple of months ago, and he
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: was very, very scathing on the way the popular press
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: misinterprets or just goes for the sensationalist headline. And I
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: think we've seen it a bit with the Life on
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: the other planet that we talked about earlier K two
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: eighteen B. There's been a bit of that going on.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: A lot of them have actually been very good and said, look,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: we don't know. This is what science so hoping and
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: thinking and studying, but it's not confirmed. But others have
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: gone all life on another planet boom, end of story,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: not true, or they probably put it in the last paragraph.
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: That happens a lot unfortunately, Fred, I know, I know
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: where Johnty stands. I'm sure your thoughts are probably similar.
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: They're they're similar, that's right. It's partly, you know, a scientist.
• 29:28
  Speaker 3: In many ways, it's partly our own fault because we
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: do tend to couch things in maybes and perhaps and possibilities,
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: and of course that's what the media pick up on.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: It's it is hard to avoid that. I think we
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: have to be careful that.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: I mean that the the you know, the story we
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: discussed a few minutes ago about K two eighteen B.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: A quote from the lead author of the paper was
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: that he says that the most obvious interpretation of the
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: discovery is that the planet K two eighteen B is
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: a heishen world teeming with life. And that's throwing you know,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: it's just throwing a grenade into the media because they'll
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: pick up on that, and that's the headline, teaming with life.
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: But we've got absolutely no evidence for that. Even if
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: the observations of these chemicals is confirmed, it's still not
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: proof of living organisms. And so to say it's teeming
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: with life, I mean, he didn't say it's teeming with life.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: He said the simplest interpretation of what they've found is
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: that that's the case, but that does not mean it
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: is the case. And yes, the media pick up on that.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: And I'm also reminded as well as the sorts of
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: discoveries like the phosphenem venus and all of the other things.
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: It seems to be happening less often now, but for
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: a while, every almost every month, we got a picture
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: of a doorway on Mars, or you know, a tire
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: on Mars, a track tire. There was one which was
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: bowler hat on Mars. So somebody who's been abducted all
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: of that which we now know is this phenomenon called paradolia,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: where we look at things and say, oh, that looks
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: like a bowler hat or that looks like a tire.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: Humanize everything, we humanize it.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: Yes, that's a great generator of fake news.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: What Yeah, the article that Fenton Center, so I had
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: a look at and it's got a few examples of
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: fake news. And as someone who worked in the media
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: for forty years, I'm very much aware of how some
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: journalists operate. Not all, but some don't have the integrity
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: to just stick with the fact they want clickbait I
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: think is the modern term for it. And the writer
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: of this article, a very astute gives examples of what
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: turned out to be untrue situations, citing twenty forteen, astronomers
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: announce a whopper of a discovery primordial waves from the
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: earliest moments of the Big Bang. The South Pole telescope
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: results validated a long standing but still shaky hypothesis of
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: cosmic inflation.
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Turned out to be yes.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: And there's a couple of stories like that Tabby's star
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: in twenty fifteen with its strange light pattern, and the
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: popular press latched onto the possibility that it was surrounded
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: by a megastructure built by aliens fear that's right. Yeah,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: it was bust again. And so it goes on, and
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: they actually cite the Venus story that we've talked about
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: a couple of times already. But as we said, it
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: was debunked. But now they're undebunking at but it's still
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: got a big question mark over it. And I did
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: a bit of research myself, Fred to see if I
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: could find any other stories that popped up that turned
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: out to be wrong. Twenty sixteen, a paper in the
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Astrophysical Journal Letters suggested that galaxy d DF forty four
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: was highly unusual, containing an exceptionally high amount of dark
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: matter at least ninety eight percent. They did some follow
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: up studies and found out that it had a normal
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: amount of dark matter because it was a low mass
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: dwarf galaxy. Yeah, and so it goes on. Look, I
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: know that a lot of the time this sensationalism is
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: driven by journalists trying to make a headline, and that's
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: that's what it comes down to. A lot of these
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: papers are published, and the writer of the article that
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: Fenton refers to said it openly. There's a lot of
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: pressure on scientists and astronomers and physicists and people in
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: the science fraternity to get published, and sometimes they'll push
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: the boundaries to get that paper out there and get
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: the headline and the popular press. We'll hone in on
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: we have found life like a fly to a flame.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: And that's that's really that. That is the problem. But
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I'd like to say that most people are astute enough
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: to read beyond the opening paragraph and get to the
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: part where they actually tell you the truth be in
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: there somewhere.
• 34:50
  Speaker 3: Ye, yes, that's right, it is. Yeah, it's nearly always
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: in there somewhere. No, I agree with that. So it
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: sounds as John Ty said the same thing as what
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: I would have said.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Yes, he was sitting on a wheelchair with a sign.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: And.
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: Yes's show you what.
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: Kind of looked like him though never mind, But yeah, Fenton,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: you're right, it is something that exists. Is it something
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: to worry about? Oh gosh, maybe a bit. But I
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: think overall the science fraternity has got enough integrity and
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: certainly an abundance of intelligence to get past it and
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: stick to the facts.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: That's that's how I read it.
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's pretty well all we can say
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: about it.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: What do you reckon for it.
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, there's you know, there's an almost endless list of things.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: You know, the Apollo astronauts never went to the moon,
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: another piece of fake news, all of that kind of thing.
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: It's so it's sort of borders into conspiracy theory some
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: of the times. Well, it feeds into the same sort
• 36:02
  Speaker 3: of psychology that lets people believe conspiracies.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Ye, people who are always looking for something to believe in,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: and quite often they're easily duped.
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: And that happens.
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: And yes, the media needs to take a long hard
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: look at itself and to use the Australian colloquialism, give
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: themselves an upper cut and that might solve it bad things.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: So yeah, if you don't know what introspection means, it's
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: time you took a long, hard look at yourself.
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: That's sorry, I could resist.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Now, all right, thank you Fenton. That's a great topic
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: for debate and I hope we get to talk about
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: it again because it won't stop.
• 36:43
  Speaker 2: It just won't stop anyway.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: All good and thanks to all our contributors. Don't forget
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: to contribute yourself. If you have questions for us, send
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: them to us via our website. Space Nuts Podcast dot com,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Space Nuts dot Io. A few turn up on Facebook,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Messenger and things like that, and when I remember to look,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: I will dig them up. But your best to go
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: through our website audio or text will take them both.
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: Or you can send us a carrier pigeon if you
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: can find one that hasn't become extinct. And that brings
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: us to the end.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Fred, thank you very much, great pleasure, Andrew, and we
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: will do it again soon.
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: I hope yes, maybe next week or the week after
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: or something like that, whenever we can get together. Bred Watson,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: Astronomer at Large and thanks to hear in the studio,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: though he couldn't be with us today he is too
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: busy generating fake news. Got back to his old career
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: like that, and from me Andrew, thanks to your company.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: See you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: To the Space Nuts podcast.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite
• 37:57
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• 37:58
  Speaker 2: You can also.
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: Stream onto ma and at bites dot com. This has
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: been another quality podcast production from Nights dot com.