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Cosmic Winds, Nebula Secrets & the Mysteries of Neptune · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Space Nuts. My name is Heidi Compo, and
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I'm here with Fred Watson, Astronomer at Large. And I
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: bet many of you are wondering who is this lady,
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Why is she here? Where is Andrew? I can assure
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: you he is just fine and probably having the time
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: of his life. I am here filling in helping him
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: out while he is on a little break. And I
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: found say Space Nuts originally from just being a listener myself.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: I also have a podcast, reality Check the Science of Fiction,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: where I talk to subject matter experts about the plausibility
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: of sci fi concepts. And I am a graduate student
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: here in Space City, Houston, Texas, and I'm focusing on spaceflight,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: human optimization and performance, so I have a very interesting
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: segue into the space world. I'm really interested in a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: lot of the I guess, the sci fi concepts that
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: integrate into space science and all the new discoveries that
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Fred knows so much about. And I'm excited to be
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: here as your fill in host for this episode.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: Fifteen second guide to the in Channal ten nine ignition
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Si Wench Space Nuts NI four three two one Space
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Nuts as when actually boughted Neil's good Fred, thanks for
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: having me.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: You're very welcome. Heidi.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: Is a delight to welcome you to the Space Nuts team.
• 1:34
  Speaker 4: It's very appropriate. I think that we should be beaming
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: out from Houston, Texas. And what better person to fit
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: into Andrew's empty shoes at the moment than yourself. It's
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: lovely to have you, and I'm really looking forward to
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: our our next few sessions when we can chat together
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: behind Andrew's back.
• 1:56
  Speaker 5: Now, this is going to be great.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: So we have some really interesting topics this week. I
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: was looking over them. We're going to be talking about
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the Blue Ghost sojourn on Mars or sorry, on the Moon,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: and that looked really interesting in me. The other thing
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about is some of the
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: activity with the James Webb telescope about Neptune. So that's
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: a planet we really don't talk as much about. Neptune
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: is really kind of the ignored stepchild of the Solar System,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: so I'm excited to hear what.
• 2:29
  Speaker 5: You have to say about that activity.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: And then the last thing we'll be talking today about
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: today is the Helix Nebula and some really exciting new
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: discoveries going on with that. So I think that I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: would be interested in just jumping right in with the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Neptune story.
• 2:52
  Speaker 4: Excellent, a good planet to start with, Heidi, And you're
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: absolutely right. Neptune has only been visited by at once
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: by a human built spacecraft. Maybe there were alien spacecraft
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: that have visited it, but only one human built one,
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: which was Voyager two. And so what we know about
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: it really comes very much from the images that were
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: taken when Voyager two flew by Neptune.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: That was in the eighties.
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: But Neptune, of course is a world that has an
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: active atmosphere. It's an ice giant, one of the two
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: ice giants in the Outer Solar System, and that term
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: refers to the fact that we believe there are solid
• 3:38
  Speaker 4: ices as a kind of haze in the atmosphere of Neptune.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: So it's slightly different from the other two gas giants,
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: Jupiter and Saturn, which they don't have those icy hazes
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: because their temperature is just slightly warmer being nearer the Sun.
• 3:58
  Speaker 4: So the really interesting thing was when the flyby with
• 4:03
  Speaker 4: Voyager two took place, Neptune looked very boring. It had
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: you know, it was just like a pale, blue green
• 4:12
  Speaker 4: disc with not much happening, and I think that probably
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: did it a disservice because we've you know, we thought
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: of this planet is having rather uninteresting atmospherics, although subsequent
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: measurements made from Earth actually demonstrated that it does have
• 4:30
  Speaker 4: high winds in its atmosphere.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: And just a mention to.
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: The system of moons of Neptune because some of those
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: are particularly interesting as well. Triton is its largest moon.
• 4:44
  Speaker 4: It may well be one of these ice worlds with
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: a rocky core, an overlying ocean, a global ocean, and
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: ice on top. That's not what we're talking about today.
• 4:55
  Speaker 4: So what's the story. Why is Neptune in the news. Well,
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: it's because, as you might expect, it has been a
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: subject of observation by basically astronomy's new toy, still new
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: after three years, I guess now, the James Webb Space
• 5:14
  Speaker 4: Telescope with its marvelous infrared cameras and very very sensitive
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: spectroscopic systems. So what has been detected by the WEB
• 5:27
  Speaker 4: is something that we've known about, maybe hinted at by
• 5:33
  Speaker 4: earlier observations over a long period of time, probably since
• 5:38
  Speaker 4: the voyager flyby, that it has a rory or auroras
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: if you want to be less picky about your Latin,
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: northern and southern light like we have on Earth, like
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: the other gas giants themselves have. But the problem is,
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: you know, hints are fine, but what you really want
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: is a kind of signature of these things in the spectrum,
• 6:05
  Speaker 4: the sort of rainbow of colors that we see when
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: we split the light up into those components, and that,
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: as we've discussed many times on space Nuts, those spectra
• 6:17
  Speaker 4: are crossed by a kind of almost like a you know,
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: a supermarket barcode of information which we can read and
• 6:26
  Speaker 4: detect what gases are involved with these with these spectral colors.
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: So yes, the James Webb has thrown its might behind
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: observations of Neptune, and sure enough we have found strong
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: emission of the kind of telltale elements that indicate auroral activity.
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: And remember a rorria caused by the solar particles, the
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: subatomic particles that come from the song interacting with the
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: atmosphere of planet. That's what caused the glow and that's
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: why it has characteristic colors, because the glow itself comes
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: from the elements in the atmosphere. So yes, ar on
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: Neptune and very similar to the phenomenon on Earth, but
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: different colors because it's different elements that are being excited.
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: The green in a rory here on Earth comes from oxygen,
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: which isn't there on Neptune. So the colors are coming
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: from they're actually coming from hydrogen.
• 7:29
  Speaker 5: Yeah, and it's absolutely beautiful. I'm looking at these images
• 7:31
  Speaker 5: right now.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of one of those mood rings that
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: were really popular in the nineties where it's starting to
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: change color.
• 7:38
  Speaker 5: It's really spectacular to see. And I'm seeing in this image.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: So you just described that the greenish color comes from hydrogen.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing also spots of white, because if you look
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: at the images of Hubble, which it's pretty much just
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: blew all the way across, and then the image of
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: the web, there's some big white spots.
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: Is that part of the aura?
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: I suspect some of those are clouds, which are also
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: now visible in the infrared. We see similar things in
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: the atmosphere of Uranus, white spots, which are very extensive
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: areas of cloud in the atmosphere. The atmospheric circulation, you know,
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: on both those ice giants, Uranus and Neptune, is relatively
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: slow in terms of the changes in the atmosphere, and
• 8:33
  Speaker 4: that's partly because the temperature there is minus two hundred
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: and fourteen degrees celsius at the surface, but that doesn't
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: necessarily mean that you don't get high winds, and in fact,
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: I think the winds on Neptune are the record breaking
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: winds in the atmosphere of a planet in the Solar System.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: Up to two four hundred kilometers per hour, that's what's that.
• 8:57
  Speaker 4: That's about eighteen eighteen hundred miles per hour.
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: So it's very fast. I'm thinking of it in hurricane terms.
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: It's super hurricane, that's right. And I think that there
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: is also on Neptune. There is a something that's sort
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: of related to the great red spots on Jupiter, a storm,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: a long lived storm, and maybe that's what's showing up
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: as the some of the white spots, or at least
• 9:26
  Speaker 4: one of the white spot. I'm just looking for them now.
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: There is a big white spot in the middle of
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: the JWST images, but.
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: Is the Aurora.
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: And you've just reminded me though looking at those pictures.
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: One of the peculiarities of Neptune is that we think
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: it's magnetic axis that the two magnetic poles are tilted
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  Speaker 4: well over to sort the middle latitudes, unlike here on Earth,
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: where they don't exactly align. Magnetic north is not the
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: same as geographic north, but the the magnetic poles more
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: or less align with the rotation of the planet. And
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: that's probably to do with the fact that we think
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: these that the magnetism is generated by the circulation of
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: the iron and nickel core, which is in two parts,
• 10:18
  Speaker 4: and it sort of acts like a dynamo, and that
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: generates a magnetic field. Neptune and probably the other gas
• 10:24
  Speaker 4: giants have something similar. We really don't understand the origin
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: of their magnetism. We don't know whether there's a solid
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: core or not in the gas giants. We suspect there
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: must be in order for them to have these strong
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: magnetic fields. But on Neptune, the magnetic field is tilted
• 10:38
  Speaker 4: over at quite a considerable angle to the rotation of
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: the planet, which is why the aurori appear at mid
• 10:46
  Speaker 4: latitudes on Neptune rather than near the poles as they
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: do here on Earth. As I know well from my
• 10:52
  Speaker 4: sojourn up in the Arctic two months ago.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So there's something going on with Neptune's orbit, it's either
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: wobbly or it changes or something like that.
• 11:05
  Speaker 5: Would that have anything to do with this tilt?
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: It is possible, you know, the two may be related.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: Usually the rotation of a planet and its orbits are
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: fairly decoupled. And you've only to look at Uranus, which
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: you know, as you know, is tilted over nine degrees.
• 11:29
  Speaker 4: I think it's nine degrees below what you might call
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: the horizontal the plane of its orbit, and Uranus has
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: a reasonably well.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Sort of well behaved orbit.
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: Neptune's interesting because it's, in modern parlance, it represents the
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: outermost planet of the Solar System, and it does affect
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: the orbits of the many myriads of objects that we
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: know lie beyond that, so called trans Neptunian objects, which
• 11:59
  Speaker 4: include things in the Kaiper Belt and things called resonant
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: objects like Pluto's. Pluto's are resonant objects because it resonates
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: in its orbital period with Neptune and the and the
• 12:10
  Speaker 4: scattered disc objects as they're called, way beyond that. So
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: it could be that Neptune's orbit is interacting with those.
• 12:17
  Speaker 4: Although a big planet like Neptune, it takes a lot
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: to shift its orbit to perturb it. So I haven't
• 12:24
  Speaker 4: seen those reports that you've mentioned, and everything you've just
• 12:28
  Speaker 4: heard is complete waffle. But that's the way it works
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: when you're talking about things you've not seen before, right,
• 12:34
  Speaker 4: And I.
• 12:34
  Speaker 5: Think there's just so much of that with space.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: It's the I was at a NASA tech talk last
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: week and one of the they were talking about sands,
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: which is an ocular syndrome that the astronauts experience.
• 12:47
  Speaker 5: Yes, sorry, they have issues with their eyes. And now,
• 12:50
  Speaker 5: for those of you listening, my little dogs biking for
• 12:52
  Speaker 5: attention to the corner. We're just gonna ig norm it
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: totally good time when we're done recording.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: But the the person enter he brought he was a
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: flight surgeon, and he brought up so many funny headlines
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and articles it's NASA scientists say this and this.
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: He's like, I cannot find these experts.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Yes, if anybody knows these experts that this headline is
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: claiming to talk about, please let me know, because this
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: is all wrong.
• 13:16
  Speaker 5: So I think there's a lot of that in the
• 13:17
  Speaker 5: space industry.
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: So that is a really interesting syndrome, isn't it, Because
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: that's one of the potential long lived consequences of long
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: term spaceflight that you've got these ocular effects. My sorry,
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: we're way off topic here, Heidi, But that's all right.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: I've forgotten you.
• 13:40
  Speaker 5: About Simba, like the lion king, his wagon, his tail.
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: He's asked me.
• 13:44
  Speaker 5: He's trying as hard as he can to be as
• 13:47
  Speaker 5: cute as possible.
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: He's doing a fine job.
• 13:50
  Speaker 5: Yea computer. He thinks if he's cuter, I'll stop recording
• 13:54
  Speaker 5: and go play with him.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know the syndrome.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: So just what I've read is that it may be
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: caused by the fact that, you know, the circulation in
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: the body, the blood circulation in the body changes in microgravity,
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: and that you might well have pressures in the cranium
• 14:14
  Speaker 4: that might affect the eyes in a way that we
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: don't have on Earth. Is that the thinking or am
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: I just making there?
• 14:20
  Speaker 5: You're absolutely spot on.
• 14:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: It has everything to do with fluid. So when the
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: fluid changes in the body, we normally have gravity pulling
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: that fluid away from the head, But when we're in space,
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: the fluid tends to, you know, pull up towards our
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: head and shift in places that we don't necessarily want it.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: So there that is a leading issue and causing that pressure,
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: and then there were you know, there were so many
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: other points and tangents with that, but we're learning so
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: much more about it now. And one of the really
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: interesting things with space medicine and human performance in space
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: is when we're looking at the research, we'll have like
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: an n of eight and for those of you non
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: science people, and is your subject numbers, so you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: when we're looking at, you know, cancer research, that can
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: be in the hundreds or thousands of data points that
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: we're looking at. But when we're talking about astronaut health,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: it's just a handful of people. So there's really there's
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: as much as we know about it is with the
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: people that have been to space already. And that's one
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: reason why I'm so excited about what some of these
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: other companies are doing, like Blue Origin, Axiom Virgin that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: are getting more and more people into space so that
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: we can learn more about space health, which does influence
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: health on Earth. There's so much we've learned about space
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: medicine that has helped improve life on Earth.
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: Which is remarkable and great news.
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: And one of the you know, the many, many, many
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: benefits of space exploration. We've got another commercial flight about
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: to launch. I think within the next few days.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: From two mission?
• 16:01
  Speaker 5: Oh, they're going all the time. I don't I can't
• 16:04
  Speaker 5: even keep up with all of them. Sometimes that's what
• 16:09
  Speaker 5: you should listen to this show for.
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: So I have another deputune question, and I want to
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: segue this in with the Humans and the People part.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with the book? It's a book and
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: a TV series called The Expanse. Are you familiar with it? No?
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: And I apologize for that because there's so much going
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: on out there that I simply don't have time to
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: read or look at. And yeah, I rely on I
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: certainly rely on Andrew keeping keeping me honest in regards
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: to science fiction, and I'm sure the same is going
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: to be true with you.
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: But no, I don't know about that.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, So in the Expanse, they have they have populated
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: the Solar System. There's people living on Earth, Mars, and
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: there are also people living out in the Asstroid Belts.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: They call them Belters. And these people are multi generations
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: born in space, so they have physiologically adapted to life
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: in space. So they have become physically different from people
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: born on Earth because of the gravities and the systems there.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: So I want to segue this back into talking about Neptune,
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: because we have ice, we have wind, and from what
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: I do know about greenhouse gases and thinking about the expanse,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: there has been some chatter about putting some industrial factories
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: and whatnot on Mars eventually to help generate greenhouse gases
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to help increase atmosphere on Mars. Is this something because
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: I always like to think about what we're looking at
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: and seeing with these auroras in space and everything we're learning,
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: and what does it mean for future generations?
• 17:53
  Speaker 5: Could could Neptune potentially be.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: A big power generating planet with the winds if we
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: could harvest these winds.
• 18:04
  Speaker 4: Well, the lovely idea wind turbines on Neptune, Now that's
• 18:10
  Speaker 4: really a really expansive idea, if I can use the
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: joke there.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: It's so.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: The likelihood is that with with so many things that
• 18:27
  Speaker 4: people talk about doing in space, it's actually easier not
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: to to find alternative sources of whatever it is you're
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: trying to generate. And the winds on Neptune colossal winds,
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: as we've said, you know, up to maybe approaching two
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: thousand miles per hour, How you would generate them, It's
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: hard to know. What might be interesting though, is if
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: you could use them, sorry, how you could use how
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: you could use those winds to generate power?
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: How to know?
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: But if you could use those winds to facilitate exploration
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: of the planet's atmosphere, And that's something I could well imagine,
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: you know, people dropping balloons into the atmosphere of Neptune
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: to watch the circulation, to do what we do here
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: on Earth with our multiple capacity for measuring and predicting
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: the weather. So whether or Neptune might be something that
• 19:29
  Speaker 4: turns out to be quite interesting, I think a more
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: in some ways, a more what's the word apposite? Maybe
• 19:39
  Speaker 4: is the right word world to be interested in the
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: Neptune system is moon Triton, because that could turn out
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: to be, you know, one of the places like Europa
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: and Enceladus that has the potential for perhaps living organisms
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: beneath the surface.
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: And that is very exciting, very exciting, And it really
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: just comes down to the human ingenuity, the engineering and
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: all the new breakthroughs that we're making. It seems like
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: every single day there's more stuff that we're coming up
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: with to get us out there.
• 20:10
  Speaker 6: Okay, let's take a quick break from the show to
• 20:13
  Speaker 6: give a shout out to our sponsor, Nord VPN. Now,
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  Speaker 6: space nuts. All right, let's get back to the show.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: Space Nuts, which I think.
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: Is kind of a good segue. Next, Storry.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: So now says created this new dust shield and it's
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: going to help repel the lunar regolith, which is very important.
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: The is very fine, it's very sticky.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: It can be kind of dangerous if this is getting
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: in their analogs and their facilities and where they're living.
• 22:21
  Speaker 5: So tell me more about this. This is quite the
• 22:24
  Speaker 5: interesting story.
• 22:27
  Speaker 7: That's that's Jordy. Let me just check what's happening. Because
• 22:34
  Speaker 7: he does sound like a chicken. J I do like
• 22:42
  Speaker 7: a chicken.
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: It does, doesn't it. Yeah, it's just like a rooster.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: He doesn't know that. He thinks he sounds like a
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: big Just calm down, Jody, it's all right.
• 22:51
  Speaker 4: That there's there's a dog that he hates that he's
• 22:54
  Speaker 4: only occasionally brings it near our.
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: Property to take.
• 22:58
  Speaker 5: Don't they know better?
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, joby count out.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: Okay, So the lunar regularis back to the Moon, from
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: the sublime to the ridiculous, or the other way around. Yes,
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: you're right, absolutely right that the soil on the Moon
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: is such an interesting thing. It's different from anything we
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: have on Earth. And that's because it has been formed
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: not by wind and water erosion like the soil on
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: Earth has, but by bombardment by these subatomic particles, the
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: wind of particles that constantly blows from the Sun, probably
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: a few micrometeorites banging into.
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: The surface as well.
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: And so what we've got is a soil that is
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: very very fine and very angular, so it's got sharp
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: edges all the way around it. And exactly as you've said,
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: that's why it gets into all the nooks and crannies,
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: all the crevices that the basically the clothing of astronauts.
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: There is one.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: Recorded case, and you probably know more about this than
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: I do, Heidi, one of the Apollo missions, and I
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: can't remember which one it was, but so much dust
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: was brought into the lunar module by one of the
• 24:11
  Speaker 4: astronauts that it pervaded the whole return trip back to
• 24:15
  Speaker 4: Earth and gave that person the first case of Luna
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: hey fever because he was sneezing all the time because
• 24:22
  Speaker 4: of this dust.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: I can't remember who it was.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I do remember hearing about this. I also can't remember
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: who it was. But yeah, it can be quite the problem.
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: It's just a sticky, fine mess.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: So NASA, in their wisdom, are looking at ways to
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: mitigate the effects of that. And as part of the
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: Blue Ghost mission, that was a spacecraft at commercial spacecraft
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: landed on the Moon successfully I don't know a month ago,
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: I guess it's not very long ago, which was part
• 24:54
  Speaker 4: of NASA's program for I think it's called the Commercial
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: Lunar Payloads program, in other words, getting the commercial world
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: to actually do some of the legwork in preparing for
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: the Artomus flights to the Moon later in the decade.
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: And one of the experiments carried on board Blue Ghost
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: was indeed about how you can reduce the effects of
• 25:20
  Speaker 4: this lunar dust. It has a name, it is called
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: the EDS, the electrodynamic dust shield, and basically it is
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: a way of removing the contamination of dust and dirt
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: from whatever surfaces you've got on the Moon.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Probably it's more.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: Like spacecraft surfaces than clothing, although it might lend itself
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: to that eventually. And it seems to have worked very
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: very well. There is a pair of images which are
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: pretty easy to find on the web. I'm looking actually
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: at the NASA website itself for the press release which
• 26:04
  Speaker 4: is entitled NASA's dust shield successfully repels lunar regularly on
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: the Moon, and you can see her before and after
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: with this device activatesd I suspect it works well. It's
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: called an electro electrodynamic dust shield, but that electrodynamic usually
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: means moving electrons, so there's a current flowing, but I
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: suspect that the basic mechanism is electrostatic. It's a repulsion
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: of the of the you know, the flightly charged soil
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: particles that.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: Exist on the Moon.
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: They are they are electrically charged, so if you can
• 26:44
  Speaker 4: give them an opposite charge, they'll be repelled. And that
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: looks as though it's what's happening, and it's been met
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: with success, so perhaps it's a step forward in cleaning
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: up our voyages to the Moon and not bringing back
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: a whole lot of unwanted moon dust when you come
• 26:58
  Speaker 4: back to Earth.
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, And I'm just thinking again of the implications for Earth,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: because i think sometimes there's a little bit of like
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I said earlier, there's a little bit of a disconnect,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: you know, thinking space and how it's not related to
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Earth and it's so so related to everything we do
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: here on Earth. I mean, GPS, NASA gave us, GPS,
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: NASA gave us water purification, NASA gave us. Oh man,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: I'm totally mind blanking the big machine that you go
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: into that scans you, if you go to the hospital,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: MRI machine, Yes, that should be the one that I know.
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, so much of this has come
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: from space science, and I'm thinking of something that would
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: make my life easier, even just on the simplest level.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: If the surfaces in my house, my tables and everything
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: repelled dust. And I don't know if we are just
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: that much closer to inventing dust repelling surfaces, and that
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: just makes everybody's life that much easier, that much safer,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: because then you're not using cleaning agents and chemicals to
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: clean your house. You just have a surface that just
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: repels that dust automatic and that just that could even
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: have really good implications in sterile environments like computer places
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: where they're building computer or hospital settings. So this is
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: actually very very exciting that they're doing this. And the
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: article is quite short, it's just a blurb, but the
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: implications of this, you know, we don't know how this
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: is going to improve life down the road.
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Exactly. That's right.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: It's you know, the the sky the sky's limit, really,
• 28:28
  Speaker 4: isn't it in terms of what we can do with
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: the space technology technology perfected for space. I do worry,
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: you know, if you if you press a button and
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: all the dust leaps off all the surfaces in your house,
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: you might need an extractor fan to take them away.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: So they don't wind up somewhere where you don't want them.
• 28:47
  Speaker 5: Yes, to be the next the next segue, Okay, we
• 28:53
  Speaker 5: take a space nets.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, speaking of the sky being the limit. Our last
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: article that we're looking at there was a big Nebula
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: explosion and there's a glow left over from it. The
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: title is a Nebula's X ray glow may come from
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: a destroyed giant planet, and that's quite dramatic. But we
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: are excited about these images because it tells us about history.
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: That's right, And in fact, everything in the universe tells
• 29:34
  Speaker 4: you about history, which is great. You're always looking back
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: in time. We're looking back in this case.
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: I think it's about six hundred and seventy six hundred and.
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: Fifty light years. It's a very very well known object
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: called the helix nebula, and in fact first captured in
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: full color by my colleague and friend David Merlin, who
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: was the person who essentially developed a technique in the
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: nineteen seventies and eighties to put true color into celestial
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: images by taking three sets of photographic plates as we
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: used in those days, through red, green, and blue filters,
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: and he became very well known for that. He was
• 30:16
  Speaker 4: totally fastidious and still is actually about getting the color
• 30:20
  Speaker 4: balance right, so that what we saw in these images
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: was what we would be able to see if our
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: eyes were millions of times more sensitive. Now segue from
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: that to the present time. When that lovely color image
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: of the helix nebula, it became very very famous. That
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: was what we see in visible light, but it's now
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: been observed many other wavelengths of light as well, and
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: ranging from infrared to X rays I fact put it
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: that way around, or X rays to infrared, and it's
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: the X ray radiation that is the most exciting, and
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: it's the reason why we've got this story. So the
• 31:01
  Speaker 4: helix nebula, just to give the backstory, is what we
• 31:03
  Speaker 4: call a planetary nebula, and it's nothing to do with
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: planets except in the way that we'll come to in
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: a minute. It was called that by William Herschel, an
• 31:14
  Speaker 4: astronomer back in the early nineteenth century, who saw these
• 31:18
  Speaker 4: things which were clearly not planets because they were in
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: the deep sky. They were moving with the stars rather
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: than with planets, so they weren't in the Solar System,
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: but they had a slightly planetary appearance. They looked circular,
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: so he called them planetary nebulae. And what we discovered
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: in the early twentieth century is that what we're seeing
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: there is the outer layers of a star which has
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: reached old age and is not massive enough.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: To explode like a supernova.
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: An exploding star that detonates and blows itself to pieces,
• 31:55
  Speaker 4: you need to be more than about three or four
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: times the mass of the Sun to do that. In fact,
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: ten times is probably a better bet. The star, like
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: the Sun, gets to the end of its life and
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: basically the instabilities that are caused by the fact that
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: it's used at most of its hydrogen fuel. It causes
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: the outer atmosphere to basically to be shed gently and
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: that produces a cloud of gas, often spherical in forms.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: Sometimes they're eyeglass shaped. They've got all kinds of different shapes.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: But the helix nebula in the southern hemispheres sky is
• 32:30
  Speaker 4: the classic example of a planetary nebula. A star at
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: the end of its life, it shed its out alair
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: as they're glowing. Because what's left of the star is
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: a remnant called a white dwarf, which is an object
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: the size of our planet, size of the Earth, but
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: with the mass of a star, so it's very very dense. Now,
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: white dwarfs are interesting creatures in their own rise, but
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: the helix nebula has one that is even more interesting
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: the normal because it radiates copiously in X rays and
• 33:05
  Speaker 4: X rays. We have to get above the atmosphere to
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: detect because the atmosphere fortunately absorbs X rays very very effectively.
• 33:14
  Speaker 4: But there's been a number of space satellites, mostly satellites
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: around the Earth, spacecraft that have been essentially used to
• 33:23
  Speaker 4: survey the sky in X ray emission, and the helix
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: nebula of course, has been one of the things that
• 33:32
  Speaker 4: have been looked at with X rays with a whole
• 33:35
  Speaker 4: series of different satellites through the you know, through the ages.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: It was.
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: Actually first detected by back in the early nineteen eighties
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: by NASA's Einstein Observatory, which is an X ray satellite,
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: and there was another one called ROSAT.
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: I guess it comes from the German word for X
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: rays after.
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: Professor who discovered them Rosat in the nineteen early nineteen nineties.
• 34:05
  Speaker 4: Both of those spacecraft detected X rays from from the
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: helix nebula, which weren't really understood now. Those have been
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: followed up a couple of decades later. NASA's Chandra X
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: ray Observatory in nineteen ninety nine and XMM Newton which
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: is a European Space Agency spacecraft in two thousand and
• 34:24
  Speaker 4: two have recorded these copious quantities of X rays coming
• 34:28
  Speaker 4: from the helix nebula.
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: What is it all about? Where do they come from?
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: How do you get something that shouldn't be producing X
• 34:35
  Speaker 4: rays but has you know, sort of thirty years, well
• 34:39
  Speaker 4: twenty years anyway of strong X ray emission. And so
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: the people who think deeply about these things, the theoretical astronomers,
• 34:48
  Speaker 4: and some of these astronomers in this case, some are
• 34:52
  Speaker 4: in the United States, but some are also in Mexico.
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: They have deduced that what's happened is probably a Jupiter
• 35:02
  Speaker 4: sized planet, maybe a bit more than Jupiter, was orbiting
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: the star as it reached the end of its life,
• 35:14
  Speaker 4: carried on orbiting the white dwarf. But because of the
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: forces involved with the collapse of the star to a
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: white dwarf at the end of its life, that the
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: planet was shredded basically and formed a ring of disc sorry,
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: a disc of material, not a ring of disc that
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: doesn't make sense. A disc of material around the around
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: the white dwarf which is accelerated to very very high velocities.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: The gravitational field of a white dwarf is a bit
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: like a black hole, not quite as extreme, but very strong.
• 35:45
  Speaker 4: And so this is the ghost of a planet exactly, Yes,
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: the debris of a planet. Planetary ghost. I love the
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: term it's but it's all it's you know, it's basically
• 35:56
  Speaker 4: it's dismembered remains whizzing around this white dwarf at high
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: orbital velocity, and that creates X rays because of the
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: heating effects of this turbulence that is in the disc
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: of material. And that's the theory at the moment, and
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: it's the best one that we've got as to why
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: the Helix nebula is so copiously emitting X rays. That
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: it's got an unfortunate planet that didn't survive the collapse
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: and is radiating.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Violently in the X ray wavelength. So that rather story.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: Let me see if I understand this correctly. So I'm
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: looking at this image and it's got kind of a
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: red dot in the middle. For those listening, if you
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: don't see the image, you guys can look up the
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: Helix nebula. It's a very famous photo and you'll see
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: what I'm describing. It almost looks like a kind of
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: like an eye. So it's got this red like the terminator.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: It's got this red dot in the middle, and then
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: it almost looks like an iris, and then it keeps
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: expanding out. It actually does look exactly like an eye.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: Now that I look at it.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: But so the planet got sucked into the red which
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: is the dwarf, and then bun apart like a centrifuge.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: And because it looks like it exploded from inside out,
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: well what's happening is it's spinning apart, and that's why
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: it's surrounding this red and it's spinning, and so the
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: gravity is like the debris coming apart from the center
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: rather than getting pulled into the center.
• 37:23
  Speaker 5: Is that what I'm am, I understanding. That's correct.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, Yes, that's right. So the X radiation is,
• 37:32
  Speaker 3: you know, it's sort of pervading the whole of the nebula.
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: You've got X rays coming from every part of it,
• 37:40
  Speaker 4: or appearing to but they're being emitted by this object
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: which is actually within.
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: It's not visible.
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: The disc itself is not visible, the disc of material
• 37:50
  Speaker 4: that was this planet that's too near the white dwarf.
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: The white dwarf itself is visible, in visible in optical image,
• 38:00
  Speaker 4: visible light images, but not in the X ray image.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: So it's a match of inference along the lines that
• 38:06
  Speaker 4: you've just described.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: So maybe you already explained this because this doesn't make
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: sense to me. Why so if the gravity is strong
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: enough to be keeping these bits and parts within its gravity.
• 38:18
  Speaker 5: Why is it still spreading out.
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: So that the the the gaseous envelope of the star
• 38:28
  Speaker 4: itself is that was basically emitted over many millions, probably
• 38:36
  Speaker 4: tens of millions, hundreds of millions of years before the
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: star collapsed into a white dwarf. So that's far enough
• 38:43
  Speaker 4: away that it's not feeling that intense gravity in the
• 38:48
  Speaker 4: you know, the region.
• 38:49
  Speaker 3: Near to the white dwarf itself.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: It's it's basically drifting off as because you know, the
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: distances are measured in light years, they're not they're not
• 38:59
  Speaker 4: measured in million of kilometers.
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: They're very very large distances.
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: So yes, it's a great question though, So it's all
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: the stuff that is really within the immediate vicinity of
• 39:10
  Speaker 4: the white dwarf that's feeling that acceleration and undergoing that
• 39:15
  Speaker 4: intense orbital motion around the white dwarf.
• 39:20
  Speaker 5: Is this your favorite nebula?
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: It probably is.
• 39:24
  Speaker 4: Actually that's a really good question too, because I've never
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: sort of thought about that. There is a well known
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: one in the northern sky which will be visible from Houston,
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: called the ring nebula, But the Helix nebula, I think
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: is a little bit more glamorous because it's got a.
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: Bit more structure to it.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: It's got this it's called the helix nebula because it's
• 39:43
  Speaker 4: it looks a bit like a sort of unwound spring.
• 39:47
  Speaker 4: And you can see you're probably having a look at
• 39:48
  Speaker 4: the ring nebula as we spear.
• 39:51
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's absolutely beautiful. That's just stunning.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: So I think maybe this will be a topic for
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: a or another session, but I definitely want to understand
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: more of the technology that you said your friend developes.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: And he was also Fred No.
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: Actually is Fred's middle Dave's Frederick David Maeln. Yeah, so
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: he just briefly.
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: When the Anglo Australian Telescope, it's the largest visible light
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: telescope on Australian soil, with a three point nine meter
• 40:30
  Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty six inch mirror, and he and
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: I both worked there. I was the astronomer in charge
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: for twenty years in fact, but before that he in fact,
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: when the telescope was brand new, he was taken on
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: board on the stuff. He speaks a lot like me
• 40:46
  Speaker 4: because it comes from the North of England, went to
• 40:49
  Speaker 4: Australia and perfected this technique in those days imaging of
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: astronomical objects was done with photographic plays, and I'm talking
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: about nineteen seventy five. That's when he went to Australia
• 41:01
  Speaker 4: and apart from a few experiments with color emulsions, normal
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: color film, which really didn't work well for astronomical objects
• 41:11
  Speaker 4: because color film is designed for a very short exposure.
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: You know, you're in a camera, press the button, shutter
• 41:18
  Speaker 4: opens and closes again in the fiftieth of a second,
• 41:20
  Speaker 4: and you record the image. Astronomers spend hours exposing their
• 41:25
  Speaker 4: photographic plays as we did in those days, and the
• 41:29
  Speaker 4: whole you know, optical chemical process that makes color photography
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: just didn't work, and so he designed this technique. It
• 41:37
  Speaker 4: actually goes back a couple of hundred years to you
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: know way people thought you can perhaps replicate with the red,
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: green and blue, you can replicate a color image, and
• 41:47
  Speaker 4: it's true you can, but it took David's skills and
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: hard work to perfect that and the result was twofold.
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: It made the telescope very famous because his images found
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: their way on to the front covers of magazines and
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: album covers and books.
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: They were all over the world in.
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: The nineteen eighties early nineteen eighties. It made the telescope
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: famous and it made him very famous as well, and
• 42:12
  Speaker 4: he still is interested in this.
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: He's now retired.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: He doesn't really do any frontline photography anymore, but occasionally
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: we end up involved in scientific discussions about all kinds
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: of things, so he's still very active.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Well, it's I mean, I think nebula's I think are
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: probably one of the most beautiful, beautiful things in space,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and these images are just breathtaking and to think of
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: the it's almost impossible to comprehend the scale of a
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: nebula because we just see him on our desktop as
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: a beautiful picture, but to think of the size and
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: the magnitude is quite amazing. And the contributions the field
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: are really quite incredible. It's quite astonishing to think of
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: the conspiracy theorists and how they think that these are
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: just you know, computer generated and they're like, oh, the
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: scientists are just painting the photos to make them look
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: like how they want. And then you're telling us stories
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: of how your friend and you put twenty years into
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: just developing these technologies.
• 43:10
  Speaker 4: Yep, yeah, that's right. Look, conspiracy theories another breed. We
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: can talk endlessly about them, but yes, you know, the
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: work that David did was really very rigorous to try
• 43:28
  Speaker 4: and make sure that what we were seeing was what
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: we would see if our eyes were more sensitive. The
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: downside of that, Heidi, is that whenever David went anywhere
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: to get a talk, and he did that all the time,
• 43:43
  Speaker 4: especially in the digital era, as things moved on, he
• 43:47
  Speaker 4: got very upset if the color balance on the projector
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: was not to his liking. And indeed he started all
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: his talks and I do now too, with a basically
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: a color chart, you know, a color die, and if
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: it wasn't to his liking, he would start tinkering with
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: the projector to try and make it so, and once
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: in a while he would refuse to give the talk
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: because it would not show his pictures in the true
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: colors that he'd work so hard to create.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: Talk about a perfectionist things like that, you really just
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: makes the conspiracy theorists sound just that more that much
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: more silly.
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: They think they have something figured out because they watched
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: a YouTube video.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: Yes, but.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Not to end on a negative note of the conspiracy theorists,
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: and we'll take it as we're ending on a positive
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: talking about these beautiful, beautiful nebulas and these incredible contributions
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: to the field, and I just want to, I don't know,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: inspire and encourage listeners to if you're a space enthusiast
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: to keep considering all these possibilities, and if you are
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: someone who works in the field, you never know what
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: you know you're going to be producing twenty years from now,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: and what your work is going to do and contribute
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: to humanity, and what kind of neuroticism you'll develop, if
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: you'll never be able to look at a projector the
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: same way, or if you're just going to become the
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: person who is so obsessed with doing this one thing
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: because you've put twenty thirty forty years into studying something
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: so incredibly niche Fred, do you have anything else you
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: want to add?
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Not to that story, just to say this has been
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: a wonderful session. I think it's episode five hundred and
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: nine that we've just done. Wow, it's been great talking
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: to Heidi and I look forward to our next chat.
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: Excellent.
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: Again, thank you so much for having me and you
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: have been listening to space Nuts.
• 45:43
  Speaker 3: Thank space Nuts.
• 45:44
  Speaker 8: You'll be listen to the Space Nuts podcast Hope available
• 45:49
  Speaker 8: at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 45:55
  Speaker 8: You can also stream on demand at bides dot com.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: This has been another quality bond Cast productions from nights
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: dot com