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The Dark Matter Hint That Could Rewrite Physics · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Andrew Dunkley: Hello again. Thanks for joining us on Space
• 0:02
  Nuts where we talk astronomy and space
• 0:04
  science. My name is Andrew Dunkley. Thanks
• 0:06
  for joining us. We've got a jam packed
• 0:08
  programme today, lots of things happening.
• 0:10
  Uh, Casey from Colorado, one of our regular Q
• 0:13
  and A contributors, uh, uh, put
• 0:16
  a post on Facebook and I believe
• 0:19
  sent through an email to us saying
• 0:22
  have we found dark matter? Well, according
• 0:25
  to uh, the Lux Zeppelin uh,
• 0:28
  scientists, there's a tiny weeny,
• 0:31
  small chance we might have.
• 0:34
  Yeah, I think that's the best way to describe
• 0:35
  it. Uh, there's a wonderful storey
• 0:38
  uh, involving outback astronomy and
• 0:41
  there's been a new Saturn Decagon
• 0:44
  discovered. We'll tell you all about that and
• 0:46
  a couple of upcoming missions. China is
• 0:49
  uh, planning a sample return mission to Mars
• 0:52
  and they've uh, whittled down their 84
• 0:55
  potential landing zones to 12. And I think
• 0:58
  they're going to get it down to less than
• 0:59
  that perhaps. Uh, and another similar
• 1:02
  mission headed for Titan. We'll talk
• 1:04
  about all of that on this episode of Space
• 1:07
  Nuts.
• 1:08
  Professor Fred Watson: 15 seconds. Guidance is internal.
• 1:11
  10, 9. Ignition
• 1:13
  sequence start.
• 1:14
  Professor Fred Watson: Space Nuts.
• 1:15
  Professor Fred Watson: 5, 4, 3. 2. 1. 2, 3, 4,
• 1:18
  5, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Space
• 1:21
  Nuts astronauts report it feels good.
• 1:24
  Andrew Dunkley: And joining us again is Professor Fred Watson
• 1:27
  Watson, astronomer at large.
• 1:28
  Professor Fred Watson: Hello Fred Watson. Hi Andrew. How are you
• 1:30
  doing?
• 1:31
  Andrew Dunkley: I am well.
• 1:31
  Professor Fred Watson: How are, um, still nursing a new
• 1:34
  knee. But uh, the great thing of
• 1:37
  course always when you've had a um,
• 1:39
  replacement knee is that day by day it gets
• 1:41
  better. Whereas before the operation day by
• 1:44
  day it gets worse.
• 1:45
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, well that makes a lot of sense. You
• 1:48
  wouldn't want it the other way around.
• 1:49
  Professor Fred Watson: No, you wouldn't. That's right.
• 1:50
  Andrew Dunkley: Well if it was the other way around you
• 1:52
  wouldn't need a knee operation. There you
• 1:53
  are. Okay.
• 1:56
  Uh, we should get straight into it because
• 1:57
  we've got a lot of topics to discuss
• 2:00
  and our first storey,
• 2:02
  uh, I know you've done a bit of radio on this
• 2:05
  one, uh, but uh, Casey in Colorado sent this
• 2:08
  one through and
• 2:10
  physicists at the Lux Zeppelin detector in
• 2:13
  the United States think they may have,
• 2:16
  may have uncovered
• 2:19
  dark matter. This would be extraordinary
• 2:22
  if they have. Now the odds are pretty low
• 2:26
  but they haven't said it's definitely
• 2:29
  not dark matter. Would that be a fair
• 2:31
  assessment?
• 2:31
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right. Um, actually I'm looking
• 2:34
  at um, uh, the wrong
• 2:37
  uh, script on this at the moment and in fact
• 2:38
  I'm struggling to see anything because I've
• 2:40
  got a migraine going on here at the moment.
• 2:44
  Do you get those where you just get this
• 2:45
  lovely Zigzag pattern and cross your face.
• 2:47
  Andrew Dunkley: No, I'm very lucky, but my brother and sister
• 2:50
  both get, uh, those kinds of, uh, headaches.
• 2:53
  Professor Fred Watson: Well, listen, there's no headache. There's no
• 2:55
  headache with it. It's just this
• 2:57
  extraordinary pattern that has ticked, uh,
• 2:59
  about half an hour to mature. It starts off
• 3:02
  in the middle of your field of view when you
• 3:03
  can't see anything, and then it, uh, broadens
• 3:06
  out and it's, um, something I've observed
• 3:09
  since, uh. I think the first time I remember
• 3:11
  it. I was about 16. The first time I remember
• 3:14
  noticing it.
• 3:15
  Andrew Dunkley: You know what? I used to have that.
• 3:17
  Professor Fred Watson: There you go.
• 3:18
  Andrew Dunkley: And I couldn't explain. I never got it
• 3:20
  checked out. I just thought it was my eyes
• 3:21
  doing stupid things. But I used to have a
• 3:23
  zigzag in my vision and
• 3:27
  it happened only a few months ago and
• 3:30
  hasn't happened again since. But it used to
• 3:32
  be quite regular and now it's very rare.
• 3:34
  Well, there you go.
• 3:36
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
• 3:37
  Professor Fred Watson: Wow.
• 3:38
  Professor Fred Watson: It's, uh, basically a spasm
• 3:41
  in a nerve in your brain. And
• 3:44
  the reason, you know, it's something going on
• 3:46
  in your brain is that it's in both eyes. It's
• 3:48
  not, you know, you can't distinguish between
• 3:50
  the two. I'm so sorry to have diverted.
• 3:53
  Andrew Dunkley: No, no, it's fascinating. Well, you've
• 3:55
  actually alerted me to something that I
• 3:57
  didn't even know existed.
• 3:59
  Professor Fred Watson: There you go. That's a, uh. It's a, uh,
• 4:01
  headachless, uh, migraine. And it's.
• 4:04
  Yeah, they sometimes come with quite
• 4:06
  striking colours as well. This one's fairly
• 4:09
  benign, the one I'm looking at at the moment.
• 4:11
  Andrew Dunkley: But it can disrupt what you're trying to do.
• 4:14
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's not. Not good if you're driving.
• 4:16
  Andrew Dunkley: No, definitely not.
• 4:17
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah. Yeah. So sorry, um, about that.
• 4:21
  Andrew Dunkley: No, I'm gobsmacked because I never knew it
• 4:24
  was a thing.
• 4:24
  Professor Fred Watson: It is a thing. It is a thing. And you had it,
• 4:26
  you see, and you didn'. It needs me to tell
• 4:29
  you what you. What your ailments are.
• 4:31
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah.
• 4:33
  Professor Fred Watson: Um, but back to Dark matter.
• 4:36
  Maybe, um, migraines are caused by dark
• 4:39
  matter interaction. So, um, as,
• 4:41
  uh, I think probably all our listeners know
• 4:44
  because we go on about this stuff
• 4:46
  interminably, the evidence for Dark
• 4:49
  Matter prime primarily
• 4:52
  has come from the astronomy world
• 4:54
  because we see evidence that,
• 4:58
  uh, there is material in the universe.
• 5:00
  Universe which we cannot detect. Uh,
• 5:02
  and that, uh, evidence ranges from galaxies
• 5:05
  spinning faster than they ought to, if all
• 5:07
  that's there is normal matter, uh,
• 5:11
  to what we call gravitational microlensing,
• 5:14
  uh, where, um, objects, uh,
• 5:17
  galaxies or gravitational lensing, rather
• 5:19
  than microlensing galaxies in deep space,
• 5:22
  uh, their dark matter halos act as a lens and
• 5:25
  you can see its effect on the stars behind.
• 5:26
  And that lets you plot out where the dark
• 5:29
  matter lies. And we know dark matter is where
• 5:30
  normal matter is. So, um, it's some
• 5:33
  stuff that is real. Uh, but the
• 5:36
  conjecture has always been that if
• 5:39
  it interacts with normal
• 5:41
  matter at all, it is
• 5:44
  extremely rarely. In other words, you know,
• 5:46
  you need gazillions of collisions, uh,
• 5:49
  between matter and dark matter
• 5:53
  for one of them to produce a
• 5:56
  measurable signal. Um,
• 5:59
  and so that is the basis of some of the
• 6:02
  detectors that have been built around the
• 6:04
  world to try and detect dark matter, um,
• 6:07
  directly. Um, and in fact, there's
• 6:10
  one here in Australia, Um, it's at a place
• 6:12
  called Stoyle, uh, in Victoria. Uh,
• 6:15
  it's down a gold mine, I think. Uh, you bury
• 6:18
  these things deep in the Earth so that you're
• 6:20
  minimising terrestrial effects. You minimise
• 6:23
  anything that could be happening, uh, near
• 6:26
  the surface. Um, and what you do is
• 6:28
  you typically. And the one that we're. I
• 6:31
  should just go straight to the one that we're
• 6:32
  talking about. It's an experiment, uh, at
• 6:35
  the Sanford Underground Research
• 6:38
  Facility, uh, in South
• 6:41
  Dakota. Uh, and that
• 6:44
  is an experiment called Lux
• 6:46
  Zeppelin, usually, uh, abbreviated to
• 6:49
  lz, I guess it would be, rather than lz.
• 6:52
  Lz. Uh, that, uh, is
• 6:56
  an experiment that, if I remember rightly, I
• 6:57
  don't have my notes in front of me on this.
• 7:00
  Um, it's got, uh, something like
• 7:02
  about, I think it's 10 tonnes
• 7:05
  of liquid xenon,
• 7:09
  something that's normal temperature and
• 7:12
  pressure, but it's liquefied. So 10 tonnes of
• 7:15
  this stuff deep underground. And what you
• 7:18
  do is you have a tank which is festooned with
• 7:20
  photo detectors. So if
• 7:23
  anything flashed in the,
• 7:26
  in the tank of xenon, uh, you could
• 7:29
  identify it. And more especially, uh,
• 7:32
  because you've got lots of detectors, you
• 7:33
  could, uh, track a
• 7:36
  particle if that's, you know, the
• 7:39
  way it goes, because you've got multiple
• 7:40
  detectors which are all active all the time.
• 7:44
  So, uh, that is
• 7:47
  where it's got to in terms of the experiment.
• 7:50
  But, uh, what's happened is
• 7:53
  they've detected a flash.
• 7:54
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah.
• 7:56
  Professor Fred Watson: Uh, which, um, is a result.
• 7:59
  Uh, I think it was announced, um, only a few
• 8:02
  days ago, first of September. Um,
• 8:05
  uh,
• 8:08
  in many ways it's the first hint, certainly
• 8:10
  the first hint that's come from the usa, uh,
• 8:13
  that maybe one of these collisions has been
• 8:15
  Observed. Now, um, I'm not a particle
• 8:18
  physicist, Andrew, as you know. I'm supposed
• 8:20
  to be an astronomer. Probably am actually, in
• 8:22
  some ways. Um, and, uh,
• 8:25
  the. Uh. So I'm not sure of
• 8:28
  the exact nature of the observation,
• 8:31
  whether they observe, uh,
• 8:34
  this flash in different wavelengths, in other
• 8:37
  words, using different filters, uh, and can
• 8:40
  analyse what the spectrum of that flash looks
• 8:42
  like or whether it's something more subtle
• 8:44
  than that. Uh, but that is what
• 8:47
  is currently going on now. And I
• 8:50
  think, uh, the surprise is
• 8:53
  that this thing has a relatively low energy.
• 8:56
  Uh, it's a slow particle.
• 8:59
  Uh, and, um, they're talking about energies
• 9:02
  of. I think it's in the region of
• 9:04
  250, uh, kilo
• 9:07
  electron volts, kev, 248 kev of
• 9:10
  energy in the detector. Um. Now, the
• 9:13
  Large Hadron Collider collides
• 9:16
  particles up to, uh,
• 9:20
  teravolt energies. Uh, so
• 9:23
  a kilovolt and a teravolt are very wide
• 9:26
  apart. But that's an interesting aspect of
• 9:29
  this. So I think it's one of these storeys
• 9:31
  that, um. Um. Uh,
• 9:34
  will evolve. Um, I mentioned a minute ago
• 9:37
  that this was the first time it's been
• 9:38
  detected or there's any kind of detection in
• 9:41
  the U.S. and that's because there's an
• 9:44
  experiment at, uh, uh, a
• 9:46
  facility called Gran Sasso National
• 9:49
  Laboratories, which is in Italy,
• 9:52
  uh, and there's one in China too. Um, which
• 9:55
  I think, uh, these.
• 9:58
  Professor Fred Watson: Uh.
• 9:59
  Professor Fred Watson: Certainly the Italian one has picked
• 10:02
  up things before and there's evidence
• 10:05
  from the Italian operators that they thought
• 10:08
  they'd found a. Uh. And I think we talked
• 10:09
  about this on Spacenuts. They thought they'd
• 10:11
  found a seasonal variation in
• 10:14
  the flux of what might be dark matter.
• 10:16
  Uh, but that's not been replicated
• 10:19
  anywhere else. I think that was one of the
• 10:21
  reasons why the Stoyle facility was, uh,
• 10:24
  initiated down in Victoria. Um, in order
• 10:27
  to cheque whether this is real, this
• 10:30
  storey that's coming from Italy, um,
• 10:33
  unfortunately, I can't read anymore in my
• 10:35
  book. Has got these zigzags across
• 10:38
  the field of view, which are interesting in
• 10:40
  their own right. But, um, I think that's the
• 10:42
  bottom line there.
• 10:44
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I think they're saying, look, it could
• 10:47
  be, uh, the odds of it being a
• 10:49
  dark matter discovery are, uh, 0.5%.
• 10:52
  I think they're quoting.
• 10:53
  Professor Fred Watson: Yes, that's right.
• 10:55
  Professor Fred Watson: Um.
• 10:56
  Professor Fred Watson: Uh, isn't that the odds that it's
• 10:59
  not real? I can't remember which way.
• 11:01
  Andrew Dunkley: Is that what they're saying?
• 11:03
  Professor Fred Watson: I need to just look at that again.
• 11:05
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, I'M trying to find it now.
• 11:07
  Professor Fred Watson: You know we think in terms of um,
• 11:10
  sigma, the number of standard deviations.
• 11:13
  Uh, um, this doesn't, I think five sigma is
• 11:15
  the normal acceptance for a fact. This I
• 11:18
  don't think is anywhere near that. But it's
• 11:20
  still, I think it's still got quite a high
• 11:22
  level of probability attached to it. Uh, and
• 11:25
  just to clarify, I'm sorry, um, uh, what I
• 11:28
  said was just a bit misleading. That
• 11:30
  248 kilo
• 11:33
  electron volts is actually a
• 11:35
  recoil, that's a recoil of a particle.
• 11:39
  Um, and so they can deduce from that that it
• 11:42
  would be uh, at least
• 11:44
  200 giga electron volts that your dark matter
• 11:47
  particle uh, would have
• 11:50
  to work out. That's quite an interesting.
• 11:52
  Andrew Dunkley: I found it, uh, the team reached what is
• 11:54
  known as 2.6-sigma, a
• 11:57
  0.5% chance that the event could be
• 12:00
  explained by known backgrounds.
• 12:03
  Uh, and that is still below a five sigma
• 12:05
  threshold needed to confirm a discovery. So
• 12:08
  there you go. Bit more complicated than what
• 12:11
  I thought.
• 12:12
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, but it's uh, intriguing.
• 12:15
  It's. You know this could just be the first
• 12:17
  chink in new physics that we've
• 12:20
  been looking for that might give us an
• 12:22
  explanation for what dark matter is.
• 12:25
  Andrew Dunkley: Indeed, uh, they've published their findings
• 12:28
  in the archive. It is yet to
• 12:30
  be uh, peer reviewed but I'm sure it
• 12:33
  will be,
• 12:35
  Professor Fred Watson: it'll be reviewed to death. You can believe
• 12:37
  it.
• 12:37
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Uh, you can also read
• 12:39
  about it on the ABC Science website.
• 12:43
  Yes, this is space Nuts. Andrew Dunkley here
• 12:45
  with Professor Fred Watson Watson.
• 12:51
  Professor Fred Watson: Tranquilly Base here. The eagle has landed.
• 12:54
  Professor Fred Watson: Space nets.
• 12:55
  Andrew Dunkley: This storey Fred Watson I love, uh, because
• 12:58
  it involves an outback astronomer. Uh,
• 13:01
  it is uh, a new decagon
• 13:03
  that's been discovered on Saturn uh, around
• 13:06
  its south pole. And Trevor Barry has
• 13:09
  made the news uh, out of Broken Hill in
• 13:11
  Outback New South Wales because uh, he was a
• 13:14
  part of this find.
• 13:16
  Professor Fred Watson: Absolutely. Trevor's an old friend. Trevor
• 13:18
  and I go back to the mid-1990s when he first
• 13:20
  visited me at Siding Spring Observatory and
• 13:22
  we hit it off and we've been in touch ever
• 13:25
  since. Um, he, let's uh, just
• 13:28
  do the Trevor bit of the storey. Um because
• 13:31
  this is certainly a double barreled
• 13:34
  storey here. Uh, he um,
• 13:37
  discovered uh, astronomy when he was a, he
• 13:40
  wasn't a miner, he was a mine worker in the,
• 13:42
  I think he was a fitter actually in the mines
• 13:44
  in Broken Hill. Uh, and um,
• 13:47
  one of his colleagues built a telescope and
• 13:50
  had a look through it at the planet Saturn
• 13:52
  and has been hooked ever since. Um, and built
• 13:55
  a succession of telescopes which are
• 13:57
  impressive. I've seen uh, the one that he
• 13:59
  uses currently it's a 400 millimetre
• 14:01
  telescope, homemade. Some of its components
• 14:03
  came from an old washing machine. It's great
• 14:05
  stuff. It's kind of you know the absolute
• 14:08
  um ah essence in a way of
• 14:11
  good amateur astronomy. But with that
• 14:14
  telescope he observes Saturn. Uh I think
• 14:17
  actually it's not just Saturn. He cheques out
• 14:19
  other giant planets as well but Saturn is
• 14:21
  certainly his area of
• 14:24
  speciality and he cheques it out
• 14:27
  every clear night. And that was why he
• 14:30
  got co opted onto the Cassini team
• 14:33
  back in the early 2000s with uh, Carolyn
• 14:35
  Porco, uh, the image uh scientist
• 14:38
  of uh Cassini. Um, uh Trevor
• 14:41
  was the one that said uh there's a storm in
• 14:44
  Saturn's northern hemisphere, you might want
• 14:46
  to take a look at it with Cassini because of
• 14:48
  course the Cassini spacecraft didn't have the
• 14:51
  global view of Saturn, it just had its
• 14:53
  instruments that could be pointed in any
• 14:55
  direction. Uh whereas Trevor with his
• 14:57
  telescope could see where the activity was
• 15:00
  and he was their ah, guide. Uh
• 15:03
  so of course he received lots of honours from
• 15:05
  that. Um, I know he has spent a lot of
• 15:08
  time studying uh, the north
• 15:11
  polar hexagon of Saturn and
• 15:14
  that's a feature that was uh discovered
• 15:16
  actually by the Voyager spacecraft back in
• 15:19
  the 1980s but was uh,
• 15:22
  analysed deeply by the Cassini
• 15:25
  mission. So this is a, it's a jet stream. Uh
• 15:28
  it is a very, very
• 15:31
  regular hexagon. Uh it almost
• 15:34
  looks as though there should be a spanner
• 15:36
  somewhere nearby because it's that shape. Um
• 15:39
  and it's formed by, it's basically a
• 15:42
  six peaked wave that's formed in a circle.
• 15:46
  Uh but it looks like a hexagon. You wouldn't
• 15:48
  be able to take a spanner to it because each
• 15:50
  side of the hexagon is 2,000 kilometres
• 15:52
  bigger than the diameter of the Earth. Uh so
• 15:55
  this is large. Now, now Trevor has studied
• 15:58
  the hexagon in great detail but of course one
• 16:00
  of the, and he's got papers with his
• 16:02
  colleagues from NASA and elsewhere with that.
• 16:04
  Uh, one of the um, things that has
• 16:07
  puzzled astronomers, excuse me astronomers
• 16:10
  is um why isn't the one in
• 16:13
  the South Pole, why isn't there a hexagon or
• 16:16
  something like it near the southern polar
• 16:18
  region? And so that is something Trevor has
• 16:21
  long kept an eye on working with his
• 16:24
  colleagues, um one of whom is actually in
• 16:26
  Spain. In fact uh, we were very close to his
• 16:29
  colleague Augustine Works. Uh, we were very
• 16:31
  close to where it is, um, about a
• 16:34
  month ago when we were there for the eclipse.
• 16:37
  Um, the bottom line is that
• 16:40
  within the last three years they've
• 16:43
  started seeing evidence of something fishy
• 16:45
  going on which has now been followed up by
• 16:48
  the Hubble telescope. And what has been
• 16:50
  revealed is not a hexagon
• 16:53
  but a decagon, a ten sided uh,
• 16:57
  figure around the south pole of
• 17:00
  Saturn. And the big difference between
• 17:03
  that and the hexagon, we don't know how old
• 17:05
  the hexagon is, we don't know how long it's
• 17:07
  been there. But we do know that this decagon
• 17:09
  has only been there since 2023. It's probably
• 17:12
  still in the process of formation. Um,
• 17:15
  and so this is the result of the,
• 17:18
  or the um, announcement that's been made in
• 17:20
  this paper within the last couple of weeks in
• 17:22
  Science Advances. Trevor is
• 17:24
  absolutely over the moon. Uh, he
• 17:27
  me an email when the paper was released. Uh,
• 17:30
  and you could tell he was bursting with
• 17:32
  delight as to what's happened. He's had um,
• 17:34
  as always when Trevor makes a discovery
• 17:36
  because he's the, you know, the astronomer of
• 17:38
  Broken Hill, he gets a lot of media, uh,
• 17:41
  coverage and quite rightly too, uh, this
• 17:43
  year saw the publication of a book on his
• 17:45
  life, Outback Astronomer, which is a, uh,
• 17:47
  very nice book. Uh, I was privileged to write
• 17:49
  the foreword for it. Um, so it's one to look
• 17:52
  out for if you're interested in following
• 17:54
  Trevor's career. More especially though, if
• 17:57
  you're interested in following the decagon,
• 17:59
  there's really good news and that is that
• 18:02
  at the moment Saturn, where it is in its
• 18:05
  orbit, it's moving towards
• 18:08
  the southern summer
• 18:10
  solstice, which means that the south polar
• 18:13
  region um, of Saturn
• 18:17
  is tilted towards the inner solar
• 18:19
  system, in other words towards us. Uh,
• 18:22
  and so the solstice is uh, I think it's April
• 18:25
  2020, 2032. So between now
• 18:28
  and then we'll get better and better views of
• 18:30
  this decagon, assuming it lasts. I mean
• 18:33
  it could be something that is so temporary it
• 18:36
  just collapses, but it's definitely there.
• 18:38
  Uh, it's easy to find pictures um, of it for
• 18:41
  our listeners who might want to chase it up
• 18:43
  on the web. Um, it's um, yeah, so a great
• 18:45
  discovery with a lovely backstory as well
• 18:48
  concerning somebody who's uh, I think very
• 18:50
  special in the world of astronomy.
• 18:52
  Andrew Dunkley: Me, uh, even right down to his corrugated
• 18:54
  ironclad observatory.
• 18:57
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, that's right, absolutely. It's
• 19:00
  got all the bells and whistles I think
• 19:03
  I remember, um, I need to cheque it in.
• 19:05
  Outback Astronomer. One of his telescopes is
• 19:07
  called Fred Watson. Um and um,
• 19:10
  he's made it into an acronym. But um, uh,
• 19:13
  um, he's done me the honour of naming his
• 19:16
  telescope.
• 19:17
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, yeah, there's a fabulous storey
• 19:20
  on the ABC about him. Uh, if you
• 19:23
  want look it up, uh, should be easy to find.
• 19:25
  Just do a search for Trevor Barry,
• 19:28
  uh, ABC and uh, it'll pop up. Um, you
• 19:31
  can read the published paper
• 19:35
  in the journal Science Advances. But uh,
• 19:37
  yeah, great storey, great local connection
• 19:40
  and congratulations to Trevor and everybody
• 19:42
  involved. And I forgot to say thank you to
• 19:45
  Casey for um, um, sending us that
• 19:48
  first storey about Lux Zeppelin. This is
• 19:50
  Space Nuts, the podcast and the radio show
• 19:53
  on Community, um, Radio Across Australia with
• 19:56
  Andrew Dunkley and Fred Watson Watson.
• 20:01
  0G and I feel fine Space
• 20:03
  Nuts.
• 20:04
  Now we've got a double bunger Storey here
• 20:06
  because they're of a similar ilk in very
• 20:08
  different parts of the solar system. Uh, and
• 20:11
  the first part of this storey involves China
• 20:14
  and they're um, getting right
• 20:17
  down to the nuts and bolts. Nothing to do
• 20:20
  with Saturn's south pole, but right
• 20:23
  down to the nuts and bolts of finding
• 20:24
  somewhere to land on Mars for
• 20:28
  a sample return mission.
• 20:30
  Looking for ancient life. This is very
• 20:33
  exciting.
• 20:34
  Professor Fred Watson: It is. Um, and I think this is going to
• 20:37
  um, I think it's something that's going to
• 20:41
  not go unnoticed in the halls of
• 20:44
  NASA. Uh, because of course
• 20:46
  NASA has perseverance on the surface of Mars
• 20:49
  at the moment which has gathered up all these
• 20:51
  samples of soil and dirt
• 20:54
  from the surface of Mars. I, it's
• 20:57
  more than 20 samples I think they've got now
• 20:59
  which have been left in little containers
• 21:01
  with the idea of picking them up to bring
• 21:04
  them back to Earth, ah for um,
• 21:06
  analysis on our planet. But at the moment
• 21:09
  there's no mission planned to do that.
• 21:11
  Andrew Dunkley: No, they've just left them lying around like.
• 21:13
  Just like a dog would do.
• 21:14
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, exactly. Whereas
• 21:17
  China, um, uh, they've,
• 21:20
  they're planning a mission that will actually
• 21:23
  do it all. Basically it'll
• 21:27
  have um, a lander on the surface with a rover
• 21:30
  which will scout around. I've got a
• 21:33
  feeling there's a drone involved as well. Um,
• 21:36
  ah, it's going to cheque
• 21:39
  out good sites, it'll drill
• 21:42
  and I think the drill goes is the
• 21:45
  idea is to go down up to 2 metres which is
• 21:48
  actually what ESA's ExoMars as um,
• 21:50
  rover is planning to do, uh, grab
• 21:53
  samples and then send them back to Earth,
• 21:56
  uh, more or less immediately. And
• 21:59
  so this Is, you
• 22:02
  know, if that happens before we get the
• 22:05
  perseverance samples back, I think a lot of
• 22:07
  people are going to be miffed about that. Um,
• 22:09
  what would be even more spectacular would be
• 22:12
  if there were signs of past life among the
• 22:14
  Tianwen 3 Mars sample returns.
• 22:17
  So, um, it's an exciting, um, uh,
• 22:21
  project. I think 2028 is when
• 22:24
  the launch is going
• 22:27
  to take place. Two spacecraft will
• 22:30
  actually be launched. There'll be two launch
• 22:31
  vehicles, um, one, I think, for the
• 22:34
  lander and rover, one for the orbiter and the
• 22:37
  return spacecraft. Uh, so as you said.
• 22:40
  Quite right. They had 86 candidate sites
• 22:43
  originally. They've narrowed it down, uh, to
• 22:46
  uh, a dozen. Is that right?
• 22:48
  Andrew Dunkley: I think it was 12.
• 22:49
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're all
• 22:52
  in, I think, a similar part of Mars's
• 22:54
  equatorial region. Places where we know
• 22:57
  that there are clays, and of course clays are
• 23:01
  minerals that were formed in water, um, and
• 23:04
  they are good at preserving organic molecules
• 23:06
  and maybe, uh, give us more,
• 23:09
  um, more of a chance of finding evidence
• 23:12
  of past life there, you know, DNA evidence or
• 23:15
  something of that sort. Yeah. So, um,
• 23:18
  is exciting news and I, um, I think
• 23:20
  it's um, you know, it's, it's hats off to
• 23:23
  the China national, uh, Space Administration,
• 23:27
  um, for, for the plans that they're carrying
• 23:30
  out.
• 23:30
  Andrew Dunkley: Yes, Indeed, it's the Tianwen
• 23:33
  3 mission because they've already done it
• 23:35
  twice in the past, um, landing things on
• 23:38
  Mars. But, um, I, I do believe there is a
• 23:40
  copter involved. I can see that in
• 23:43
  the right, uh, in the storey there. I just
• 23:46
  can't find any reference to it, but I think
• 23:48
  they've got a. Yeah, it looks like
• 23:51
  it does ground tracking from
• 23:54
  the sky, but, uh, a little drone. Yeah.
• 23:57
  Professor Fred Watson: Now we know drones work on Mars.
• 23:59
  Andrew Dunkley: They do, yeah. Ah, fantastic.
• 24:01
  And they will, um, be launching
• 24:04
  this probably in 2028,
• 24:08
  is that right?
• 24:09
  Professor Fred Watson: Uh, late 2028, yes. Uh, two separate
• 24:12
  long March 5th rockets.
• 24:14
  Andrew Dunkley: And so we may have answers in the
• 24:17
  not too distant future, all things being
• 24:19
  equal, which, um, is fantastic. We wish them
• 24:22
  well with the mission.
• 24:23
  There is a similar mission, speaking of NASA,
• 24:26
  um, which is headed to Titan,
• 24:29
  Uh, they're looking at a 2028 launch, uh,
• 24:32
  as well. Um, and
• 24:35
  they're off to Titan and they should get
• 24:38
  there in 2034 if they don't forget to
• 24:41
  pay their tolls along the way. Uh,
• 24:44
  this miss, uh, the Dragonfly
• 24:47
  mission, I think we have mentioned it before,
• 24:48
  but.
• 24:49
  Professor Fred Watson: We have, yes.
• 24:49
  Andrew Dunkley: It's getting ever closer and
• 24:53
  um, they're really getting to the pointy end.
• 24:54
  By the sound of it.
• 24:57
  Professor Fred Watson: That's right. So um, and the
• 24:59
  announcement's very similar coming from the
• 25:02
  Dragonfly team. They've basically
• 25:05
  decided where they are going to land
• 25:07
  on Titan. It is
• 25:10
  uh, an area called
• 25:14
  uh, um, Amakik Undei
• 25:17
  which is a region of dunes. Um
• 25:20
  and dunes are uh, these are probably
• 25:23
  dunes of ice actually ice
• 25:26
  particles rather than sand. But uh, there's a
• 25:29
  crater called the Salk Crater which this
• 25:32
  dune region is to the south of. Uh,
• 25:34
  they think it is a uh, really
• 25:37
  interesting geologically
• 25:39
  ah, productive region.
• 25:42
  Uh and the idea is
• 25:45
  to give the drone, uh you
• 25:48
  know, as much of a variety of landscape
• 25:51
  uh as possible to cheque out.
• 25:54
  Um, this is the Dragonfly drone. I uh,
• 25:57
  think it's an octocopter if I remember
• 25:59
  rightly. So I think
• 26:02
  there's a sort of range of hills and
• 26:04
  mountains at the edge of this region. And so
• 26:07
  um, that's the plan to go there with a
• 26:10
  3.3 year uh, primary mission.
• 26:13
  Uh and as I'm reading
• 26:15
  a little blog post here, uh, about
• 26:19
  uh, what is going to um, be done
• 26:22
  with Dragonfly comes from Leonard David.
• 26:25
  Um, once Dragonfly reaches Titan the
• 26:27
  rotorcraft will conduct a uh, 3.3 year
• 26:30
  primary mission exploring diverse
• 26:32
  environments from organic dunes to deposits
• 26:35
  associated with Salt Crater, a place where
• 26:38
  liquid water and complex organic, organic
• 26:40
  materials key to life once existed
• 26:43
  together. Remembering of course that the
• 26:45
  surface of Titan is at about -190
• 26:47
  degrees Celsius.
• 26:49
  Andrew Dunkley: How is something made on Earth
• 26:52
  like the Dragonfly spacecraft and more
• 26:55
  particularly the equipment they're going to
• 26:57
  put down at Selk Crater or that area
• 27:00
  going to survive that long in such a hostile
• 27:03
  environment? It's not a nice place.
• 27:05
  Professor Fred Watson: No, not really, no. Uh, it's got quite high
• 27:07
  atmospheric pressure so that'll make the
• 27:09
  drone easier to fly. That's
• 27:12
  one of the challenges with Mars of course
• 27:14
  flying the um, the helicopter
• 27:17
  um, on Mars was the fact that it uh,
• 27:20
  Mars has a atmospheric pressure less than 1%
• 27:22
  of the Earth. So ingenuity. The helicopter
• 27:25
  had to, had ah to have big wings. Uh, perhaps
• 27:28
  the drone, uh, the Dragonfly drone won't need
• 27:30
  quite as much. But really interesting uh,
• 27:32
  project though and one that we um,
• 27:35
  will continue to watch with interest and
• 27:37
  Andrew.
• 27:37
  Andrew Dunkley: We will, yeah. And both those missions um,
• 27:40
  coming up very very soon. So uh, we're
• 27:43
  um, yeah, uh, only a few years away from
• 27:46
  getting maybe potential answers to some of
• 27:48
  those great questions that we've been
• 27:51
  asking for decades and decades.
• 27:54
  Yes, indeed. Uh, you can
• 27:57
  um, read that storey on the website
• 28:00
  leonarddavid.com.
• 28:02
  uh, before we finish up, Fred Watson, I just
• 28:04
  wanted to sort of do some shouting out. Um,
• 28:06
  we've got a listener that refers to him or
• 28:08
  her as the web pro in Chile listening to
• 28:11
  us or watching us on YouTube live today.
• 28:15
  And hello to Emily. This is.
• 28:17
  She says watching us is cool. I think it's
• 28:20
  very cool. She's listening from an offshore
• 28:23
  oil rig, uh, oil and gas rig in the
• 28:26
  Indian Ocean off the coast of Western
• 28:27
  Australia. So, um. Hi, Emily.
• 28:31
  We were on a ship crossing that area a bit
• 28:34
  over a year ago. So, um, yeah,
• 28:37
  it's, um, lovely to have you listening along
• 28:40
  and everybody who's watching actually on our
• 28:43
  YouTube channel. We are done. Fred Watson,
• 28:45
  thank you, uh, so much.
• 28:47
  Professor Fred Watson: It's a pleasure. Always. Good. And, um,
• 28:49
  thanks, Andrew, for putting up with my
• 28:52
  discussions about migrates.
• 28:54
  Andrew Dunkley: Oh, no, I'm glad you brought it up because I
• 28:57
  actually learned something.
• 28:58
  Professor Fred Watson: I'm delighted to tell you it's now cleared
• 29:00
  completely.
• 29:00
  Andrew Dunkley: Yeah, it does that. That's. That's exactly
• 29:02
  how I remember them. They just sort of go
• 29:04
  away as.
• 29:05
  Professor Fred Watson: Yeah, it's weird.
• 29:06
  Andrew Dunkley: All right, see you soon, Fred Watson. Thank
• 29:08
  you, Professor Fred Watson Watson, astronomer
• 29:10
  at large. Don't forget to visit us, uh,
• 29:13
  online at our website,
• 29:14
  spacenutspodcast.com or spacenuts
• 29:17
  IO. Have a look around while you're there.
• 29:19
  Maybe leave some reviews wherever you listen
• 29:21
  to us. Reviews are very helpful to get our
• 29:24
  numbers up. Um, I don't know what the numbers
• 29:27
  are for or what they do, but it's pretty,
• 29:29
  pretty important, apparently, according to
• 29:31
  Huw. And, uh, thanks to Huw in the studio,
• 29:33
  who couldn't be with us today because he did
• 29:35
  a sample return and they
• 29:38
  put him in hospital. Uh, and from me, Andrew
• 29:40
  Dunkley. Thanks for your company. We'll
• 29:43
  see you on the next episode of Space Nuts.
• 29:45
  Bye.
• 29:45
  Professor Fred Watson: Bye.
• 29:47
  Andrew Dunkley: You've been listening to the Space Nuts
• 29:49
  podcast, available at
• 29:52
  Apple Podcasts, Spotify,
• 29:54
  iHeartRadio or your favourite podcast
• 29:57
  player. You can also stream on
• 29:58
  demand@bytes.com.
• 30:00
  Professor Fred Watson: this has been another quality podcast
• 30:03
  production from bytes.um com.