Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Shimmering Diamonds, Asteroid Encounters & Unraveling the Dark Ages of the Universe

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Shimmering Diamonds, Asteroid Encounters & Unraveling the Dark Ages of the Universe · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is the podcast known as Space Nuts. My name is Andrew
• 0:05
  Dunnelly, your host. It's good to be back and thanks to Heidi for filling in for the last few
• 0:08
  weeks. She did a fantastic job and I'm surprised I got my job back. But anyway, that's what coming up,
• 0:15
  we are going to look at a massive layer of what could be diamonds inside the planet Mercury.
• 0:22
  We'll also be following up on the Lucy spacecraft, which is basically revealing a conjoined
• 0:29
  asteroid amongst other things, probably other asteroids and a plan to map the dark ages of the
• 0:34
  universe. We'll talk about all of that on this episode of Space Nuts. 15 seconds guidance is in
• 0:40
  journal 10 9 ignition sequence space nuts 5 4 3 2 1 2 3 4 5 5 4 3 2 1 space nuts
• 0:52
  and joining us to unravel all of that is Professor Fred Watson and astronomer Lodge Hollow
• 1:00
  Fred. How are you doing, Andrew? It's great to see you back.
• 1:03
  Well, it was my front, but yes, I'm well. Sorry, sorry, I misread your face for the back of your
• 1:10
  head. Sorry. I'm beginning the time with the hair loss. What is it? What is it? We had a fantastic
• 1:20
  trip and I won't bore everyone to death with all the minor details, but we flew into Miami.
• 1:26
  Eventually, we had a delay, so our flight, we couldn't make our flight, so we had to do an extra
• 1:31
  flight to Toronto and get a flight to Miami. So we ended up being awake for about 40 hours, I think it
• 1:38
  was by the time we landed in Miami. And then we would love this. We went to our hotel near the port
• 1:44
  because we were getting on a ship. And there was a music festival, so we'll get down to sleep.
• 1:50
  We got after that. Yeah. But yeah, got off the ship, did Columbia, did the Panama Canal,
• 1:57
  gee, that's intriguing. That is such an amazing piece of engineering, that thing. Then we went
• 2:03
  whipped around to Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, got off in LA, flew to Vegas for a few days,
• 2:13
  and we went to the sphere. Do you know about the sphere at Las Vegas? No, I don't think so.
• 2:20
  It's a big ball. Yes, I so think that. But the outside of it shows images, constant images.
• 2:27
  It's like a round television set, if you like. But it's sort of an animated setup. But inside,
• 2:35
  they do concerts and they've got the eagles coming up at the sphere in the next couple of months.
• 2:41
  I think it's next month. And there was a show on called Postcard from Earth. And you sit in what's a
• 2:51
  giant amphitheater. But the screen inside the sphere is all around you as far as you can look
• 2:59
  to the right and left in front of you and up over your head and behind you. And the images
• 3:07
  make it feel like you're actually, you know, the feeling when you're in a jet airliner and you're
• 3:13
  coming into land and they move and maneuver and just get into position to make the final approach.
• 3:18
  That's what it feels like. That's the way the images make you feel. You feel like you're flying
• 3:26
  in the open air in this amphitheater over the Earth. The images are such super high definition.
• 3:34
  They look real. And I took a few photos while I was in there and I looked at them later and it looked
• 3:40
  like I was actually standing on a snow-covered mountain top looking out over the mountains.
• 3:45
  But I was in a chair in a room. Amazing technology. And really, really enjoyable. So I was probably
• 3:54
  my highlight in Vegas. Then we flew to San Francisco. And we did all the stuff you do in San
• 4:02
  Francisco and everyone knows what that is. P-39 and blah, blah, blah, did all that. But I discovered
• 4:09
  that they have driverless taxis in San Francisco. You already ride on a map. It just on an app.
• 4:16
  It turns up in front of you. You press the unlock button on your phone. You get in, you press start.
• 4:20
  Takes you wherever you want to go. I didn't even know it was a thing yet. I thought they were testing
• 4:26
  them. But as it turns out, they are operational in four or five major cities in the United States.
• 4:32
  And they work. They work really well. And you know what? High quality vehicles. Jaguars. I was
• 4:40
  New Orleans Fred. Yep. But yeah, if anyone's going to New York, I think they're in San Francisco,
• 4:50
  Portland, maybe Seattle, maybe a couple of other places. If you're going there, give it a try. It is
• 4:55
  really great fun, really great fun. So we had a ball, saw crocodiles in Costa Rica,
• 5:02
  all sorts of stuff. It was a terrific trip. Really, really enjoyed it. So back down to earth, back
• 5:10
  down to earth, we are. And now you're going out into space with the nuts. Yes. And our first
• 5:17
  port of call will be Mercury. Now this story, I had a good raid because, you know,
• 5:24
  if you can get hold of some shaped diamonds, it's always a good thing. But these ones I imagine
• 5:30
  are hard to get to. Yeah, that's right. It's a story that basically comes from a paper,
• 5:42
  which is in Nature Communications. It's called a diamond bearing, Cormental boundary on Mercury.
• 5:48
  That really tells the story. And it's authors are Chinese and Belgian universities or institutions.
• 5:56
  And it's essentially the story here, Andrew, is that the data we've got from Mercury is fairly
• 6:05
  sparse because there aren't been that many visits. But a spacecraft called Messenger did basically
• 6:13
  send back some extremely interesting data, which essentially showed that carbon is very abundant
• 6:25
  on Mercury. And in fact, they reckon there's a cross that is perhaps the remnants of a cross that
• 6:33
  was made entirely of graphite. And so that means that, you know, when Mercury is being formed,
• 6:41
  it's core and it's magma ocean. That's the sort of ocean of molten rock that surrounds the core,
• 6:48
  which the Earth once had in its era when it had a magma ocean. They're suggesting that
• 6:55
  that those regions of Mercury were saturated with carbon. And so what they've done is they've built
• 7:02
  models of the interior of Mercury with this carbon sort of thrown into the mix. And it turns out
• 7:10
  that you've got some really interesting thermodynamics and all kinds of interesting
• 7:18
  pressure temperature gradients. And maybe an influence of sulfur as well, which is also present.
• 7:30
  They basically have worked out from these models that because of the pressure bearing down on the
• 7:38
  boundary between the core of Mercury, which is probably molten metal and the mantle, which is
• 7:47
  sort of semi-multen rock, the layer in between is carbon rich, that is their interpretation.
• 7:58
  And with these pressures and temperatures, that carbon simply turns into diamond.
• 8:03
  And so the thinking now is that there is a diamond layer at the top of Mercury's core. And they also
• 8:14
  provide evidence that suggests that it's the different sort of transmission of temperature,
• 8:26
  which we usually call conduction, of a carbon rich mantle, that is,
• 8:31
  sort of explaining some of the phenomena that we see on the surface of Mercury, the cratering.
• 8:37
  And possibly even ancient volcanic activity, which might also be giving you some evidence of this
• 8:44
  diamond layer. The chances of actually digging it up, I think are pretty slender because you're talking
• 8:51
  about something that's at least 500 kilometers below the surface. Just looked it up. I just
• 8:57
  think if it would be remotely possible to get near it, no. I don't think so. Mercury is interesting
• 9:05
  because, and we've talked about this before, but it's got for its diameter, which is roughly 5,000
• 9:11
  kilometers, it's got a core which is quite large, it's roughly 4,000 kilometers. So its core is
• 9:19
  much larger compared with the diameter of Mercury than the Earth's is, which is a lot more compact.
• 9:26
  And the thinking has long been that maybe Mercury got like that because of a collision
• 9:33
  perhaps in the early solar system that knocks off most of the material of the mantle and left,
• 9:40
  not quite a naked core, but a core with a fairly thin mantle over the top of it. And
• 9:45
  the Mercury could have been a bigger planet at some stage. That's possible, that's the thinking.
• 9:52
  And one of the reasons why scientists can work on this planet with such good information in
• 10:06
  terms of plugging into their models so that we can see what's happening. One of the reasons for
• 10:11
  that is that unlike actually most of the other planets, certainly unlike Venus or the other rocky
• 10:18
  planets, I should say, Mercury has quite a strong magnetic field, which was a big surprise when it
• 10:23
  was discovered. I think that might also have been a messenger discovery. So it's got a magnetic field
• 10:28
  and that suggests a molten core and the dynamics seem to suggest that that has on top of it
• 10:37
  a layer of diamond. Wow. Now I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here a bit, but in our next episode
• 10:44
  we've got a question about fake news in astronomy and space science. And there's been a few stories
• 10:53
  over the years that have popped up and we've gotten out of the media, gone into a frenzy and it's turned
• 10:58
  out to be wrong. This story, they're kind of hedging their bets because they're saying maybe
• 11:04
  might be could be. They're not saying definitely. Well that's right, that's very much the scientific
• 11:10
  way of doing things. Yes, I'm looking at the actual paper that has been published, it was published on
• 11:20
  the... It's actually published quite a while ago, that's quite interesting and didn't realize that,
• 11:26
  published last year. But the story is only really just emerged, there's diamonds there. Maybe it's
• 11:37
  because it's buried too far under the surface, nobody took any notice of it. But yeah, I'm looking at
• 11:41
  the paper, which is very much the scientific paper and has all the usual information there. This is
• 11:48
  not fake news. It is some interesting theoretical work based on our observations of the smallest
• 11:56
  planets in the solar system, which is no less interesting for that. Yes, the more we study, the more we
• 12:04
  learn, the more we hope to find out about how we got here and why, etc. So just adds a bit more
• 12:12
  relevance to what is a big puzzle, a big mystery of existence entirely. I mean, existence itself,
• 12:22
  I think I haven't said this for a long time, but existed it, existence itself is a mystery.
• 12:27
  Yeah, call this existing? Well, we're walking down the Monty Python road now.
• 12:38
  Yeah, it was actually Ackles, that was a quote from Ackles, the Groomshire. Yeah, Goldic,
• 12:43
  Luke. See, I haven't thought of them for a long time. Yes, really interesting. And as Fred said, it's in
• 12:52
  the Nature Communications publication, or you can find it on dailygalaxy.com, the Guime and Lair
• 13:00
  of Mercury. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Duncley and Fred Watson. Let's take a short break from the
• 13:07
  show to tell you about our sponsor, Insta360. Now, as you know, particularly if you follow me on
• 13:14
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  Now back to the show.
• 16:51
  SpaceNuts. Now Fred, it sounds like you've already had a conversation about the Lucy mission.
• 17:02
  This is a spacecraft that's heading out to the Trojan asteroids to look at asteroid,
• 17:08
  which would be really good reason to go. It's already revealed something unusual.
• 17:13
  Yes, that's right. You qualify that not unusual because we've seen these before,
• 17:19
  but we've got a nice picture. We do. We've got some stunning images from the Lucy spacecraft. They
• 17:26
  were taken at the beginning of this week. In fact, so this is hot off the press. The backstory is this
• 17:35
  spacecraft is on its way to survey the Trojan asteroids. Exactly as you've said, the groups of
• 17:41
  asteroids that orbit in the same orbit as the planet Jupiter, 60 degrees ahead of Jupiter and
• 17:48
  60 degrees behind Jupiter. They are known as the Greeks and the Trojans. I can't remember which is
• 17:54
  which, but that's the bottom line. That's the man of it too. But the interesting aspect of
• 18:02
  this is that they have basically had a flyby of another asteroid on route to the Trojan
• 18:11
  asteroid belt. This is one that sits in the main asteroid belt, so it's between the orbits of
• 18:16
  Mars and Jupiter. It's an asteroid that was not big enough to be really seen in any detail at all.
• 18:28
  Excuse me, other than just being a point of light from earthly telescopes. But we now have these
• 18:34
  absolutely stunning images of it. It is surprisingly bigger than the engineers who are basically
• 18:47
  the mission commanders for Lucy than they thought. It's too big for the pictures that we've taken.
• 18:55
  It's actually very much the shape. I'd guess of a peanut in its shell. I'm going to say
• 19:00
  yeah, potato, but no, you're right, it's peanut shaped.
• 19:04
  Yeah, it's probably two separate objects that have gradually come together and merged with landslides
• 19:13
  at their middle, the place where they've joined, a very common appearance among asteroids.
• 19:18
  Yes, you might remember that object right at the edge of the solar system,
• 19:25
  which was called ultimate doulee for a while, and I forgot what arachoth, that's what it's called
• 19:29
  now, arachoth. That is also very much this sort of structure. It's got craters on it, which you
• 19:36
  expect because these things are constantly, or have been bashed over cosmic times by other small
• 19:42
  objects. We think this asteroid is a piece of another asteroid that was collided by another asteroid,
• 19:52
  something like 150 million years ago, and so it's a remnant from an earlier collision.
• 19:58
  Really interesting object. I think the reason why I just wanted to mention it again, even though we
• 20:03
  sort of covered the story last week before the images were taken, in fact, that's when the idea
• 20:08
  that I spoke about it. The really interesting thing, and I'm sure this is what is exciting
• 20:16
  the those engineers that I just mentioned and the mission scientists who are running Lucy,
• 20:22
  is that they used effectively an autonomous guidance system to point the camera
• 20:30
  the asteroid, and that worked perfectly, and it's going to save them time when they fly by
• 20:39
  the seven target asteroids in the in the Trojan belts, because it means that they don't need to
• 20:48
  take images and send them back, which takes several minutes, and then sort of point the spacecraft so
• 20:53
  that you've got the images in the center. The spacecraft will do it all by itself, and it was
• 20:58
  designed to do that, but this really confirms very nicely that that sort of autonomous acquisition
• 21:05
  of these targets actually works. So as I've said, the only big surprise was that the asteroid is
• 21:16
  longer than expected, it was expected to be a bit more potato-shaped, in fact, as you mentioned,
• 21:21
  but as we said, it's more like a peanut, so it didn't really fit entirely into the
• 21:27
  into the field of view of the camera, but we've got enough of it to be very, very impressed by
• 21:31
  what we've seen. Nobody needs to give Lucy some basic photography lessons. Well, yes, but you try it
• 21:38
  from deep space, several times millions of kilometers from
• 21:46
  it's actually quite a stunning image that I'm looking at that's a ace.com website.
• 21:52
  Yeah, there's a nice, sorry, go ahead. No, and you can just see some really fine detail in it
• 21:58
  of the impact craters and the shape, and you can, I think you can even see where it probably joined up.
• 22:05
  Yes, that little recess or crevice or whatever you want to call it, whether two objects probably merged.
• 22:13
  Yeah, that's an option. I think that's right, with a bit of a red trail, as well, which is
• 22:17
  what you'd find, I think, with the motion of material. I mean, these things are not
• 22:24
  probably not terribly firmly bound together. That will be loose material in the neck that joins
• 22:32
  the two objects, which make up the peanut. The article that I've been looking at is on Sky on
• 22:40
  the Sky on Telescope website. I liked it very much because of the title, which is "Meet
• 22:45
  Asteroid Donald Johansson, Long and Lumpy." And that's the other nice aspect of this space craft
• 22:53
  and this space mission, which we did mention a week or so ago. The asteroid is named Donald Johansson,
• 23:00
  who was the person who discovered Lucy, that hominid fossil found in Ethiopia, after which the
• 23:06
  space craft is named. So, yeah, it's a nice little link there. And we now know what Donald
• 23:13
  Johansson looks like. Yes, he's bold. I'll see where I would that. I'd do it.
• 23:20
  I think it all reminds me that Scarlett Johansson, probably not related to Donald,
• 23:30
  started a movie called Lucy, which was based on the origin of the species through the hominid fossil.
• 23:40
  So there you are. There you go. Actually, down a very deep and complicated science fiction path,
• 23:47
  that film, but I love it. I've watched it probably five times, terrific film. If you ever get the chance,
• 23:53
  it's an absolute ripper. I really like the concept and Morgan Freeman's in it as well.
• 24:01
  A list stars for an A-grade movie. So, yeah, the Lucy space craft, just one more quick question
• 24:09
  before we finish on that, which you may have already covered previously. But what do we know much
• 24:16
  about the asteroids that it's targeting, that region, the Greeks and the... What is that, the Greeks
• 24:25
  and the Romans or whatever they were? The Trojan's and the Greeks. The other Romans,
• 24:29
  it. That's right. The Greeks and the Trojan's, yes. As far as I remember, it's six asteroids from one
• 24:38
  group and one from the other, the managing to sort of skirmish around past Jupiter, so they can
• 24:44
  check out whether these two groups are the same. We don't actually know much about them. We know
• 24:51
  from spectroscopy and using infrared filters and things like that to look at these objects,
• 24:58
  we just see the light from them rather than the surfaces of them. We can tell that they're
• 25:04
  made pretty much like the rest of the asteroids in the asteroid belt, but there will be differences.
• 25:10
  And that's what I think makes this whole experiment very interesting to find out what exactly
• 25:16
  differentiates Trojan asteroids from their neighbors in the main asteroid belt itself.
• 25:22
  It's true as well that their proximity to Jupiter, they're a long way behind and ahead of Jupiter
• 25:31
  in its orbit, but they're following the same path, but could have modified their surfaces to some extent.
• 25:38
  Because the Jupiter busks in subatomic particles because of its magnetic field,
• 25:44
  who knows what the effects they might have had. No doubt, we'll find out when I think the first of
• 25:49
  the Trojan asteroids is intercepted, I believe in 2027. Yes, it's been a long trip this one.
• 25:56
  But it always is when you go out there. Yeah, that's right. It is. All right, you can read up on that one
• 26:02
  at space.com. This is Space Nuts with Andrew and Fred. Now we're from our sponsor NordVPN.
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• 28:46
  Now back to the show.
• 28:47
  Space nuts. Our final story today is looking at the dark ages. And we're not talking about nights of
• 28:58
  the round table or anything like that. We are talking about the dark ages of the universe when
• 29:05
  we hadn't even formed any stars as yet. I'm just trying to figure out, Fred, because this mission,
• 29:11
  sorry, as I read, was about mapping the dark universe, but if you didn't have any stars,
• 29:17
  you wouldn't be able to see anything to map. There you go. And that's a good point because
• 29:24
  it's still one of the holy grails of astronomy is looking for the first stars that switched on.
• 29:35
  So what's sometimes called cosmic dawn? And that, as you've exactly as you've said, that came
• 29:41
  immediately after the dark ages. And so the first stars to switch on are very much the province of
• 29:48
  big telescopes like the James Webb, although that probably is not quite powerful enough to penetrate
• 29:55
  back to when those first stars switched on, maybe two or three hundred million years after the
• 30:02
  big bang itself. It looks back to very much that sort of era, but we're still seeing galaxies at that
• 30:10
  at that time when they're looking about three hundred million years after the big bang. So we don't yet
• 30:17
  have the visible light telescopes to do that. We will have when the European ELT, the extremely
• 30:24
  large telescope comes on stream in 2028, then we'll have a mirror big enough to probably detect the
• 30:31
  very first stars. It's 39 meters in diameter. It's going to detect very faint light indeed. So that
• 30:37
  will be the time when we do see the first stars. But we can infer when those stars switched on by
• 30:47
  looking at the effect they had on their environment because the first stars actually basically
• 30:55
  radiated lots of ultraviolet radiation. And that affected the the the cold hydrogen gas, which was
• 31:06
  basically what the universe was made of then in the dark ages, the universe was cold hydrogen.
• 31:11
  That was all that there was around. And so the first star switching on basically
• 31:18
  changed the state of that cold hydrogen. And it's that that these mini telescopes will be looking for
• 31:26
  because if you can do this for the whole sky, you know, if you can look for that cold hydrogen,
• 31:36
  signal from the from the whole sky, then you don't actually need a giant telescope. There's one in
• 31:44
  Western Australia is the size of a dining table and it's called edges. And a few years ago,
• 31:50
  they thought they had seen this signal of of the first stars. It turned out not to be the case.
• 31:58
  It turned out to be a false alarm. But you can tell that something the size of a dining table,
• 32:03
  that's a radio telescope, believe it or not, is not, it doesn't compare with something like the
• 32:09
  power station, for example, not very far from where you are now. Yeah. So you can do this as long as
• 32:17
  you've got with a small radio telescope, as long as you've got complete radio silence around you
• 32:24
  because the signal you're looking for is right in the middle of the FM band, broadcasts. And of course,
• 32:31
  in most of the world, you you you swant by these FM radio signals. And if you're trying to find a
• 32:38
  weak signal from the universe in amongst that, you're in big trouble. And so the proposal with this
• 32:45
  and to cut to the chase of this story is to mount a fleet of mini satellites, probably cubes as.
• 32:52
  And then basically put them in orbit around the moon so that they will be for part of the time,
• 33:00
  they will be within the moon shadow from the radio contamination that would come from Earth.
• 33:05
  So the dark side of the moon is a very, very radio quiet place. And that's what this study is all
• 33:12
  about. But actually capitalizing on that, exploiting that to find a very weak radio signal.
• 33:20
  Well, it makes sense. I mean, if you're going through the middle of the FM band, you're going to get
• 33:26
  all sorts of weird wonderful buffets. I used to be one of them. Yes.
• 33:30
  Now I love them. But that's, you know, the dark side of the moon has some, has some uses.
• 33:39
  And then we've got, I think we've got spacecraft that have landed there recently and they're trying
• 33:45
  to figure it all out. And it's like, I find the moon fascinating in that regard because it's got so
• 33:50
  many, you know, there's so much difference between what we can see and what we can't, even in the terrain.
• 33:55
  It's a very unusual, um, astral body, isn't it? It is. That's right. And you know, the more we find out
• 34:05
  about it, the more unusual it appears. And you're quite right. Is the Changya 4, it's one of the
• 34:10
  Changya series of Changya, the spacecraft, which is on the, on the far side of the moon. And actually,
• 34:17
  that communicates with Earth via, a sort of relay station, which is also on the far side of the moon.
• 34:26
  So there is at least one source of contaminating radiation for any radio telescope you put up there.
• 34:32
  But at least that can be switched off. Yeah. Well, if they choose them, yes indeed.
• 34:38
  All right. That story, you can read up at dailygalaxy.com, but you can also follow
• 34:45
  on several news outlets. And yes, hopefully they'll come up with some fascinating information.
• 34:53
  Eventually, I think they're still, are they, I think they're in the planning phase, aren't they?
• 34:58
  Or is it a proposal still? Yes. So fingers crossed, they can find the money to send those cubes,
• 35:05
  sacks up and get that show on the road. Speaking of which, this show is ending its journey in this
• 35:13
  particular episode. Thank you, Fred, as always. Thanks very much, Andrew. Great to see you back. And
• 35:18
  we enjoyed having Heidi very much, but it's good to welcome you back after Souljaun here.
• 35:26
  Thank you, Fred. I appreciate that. And thanks to you in the studio for not talking to me for the last
• 35:33
  four or five weeks. That was good. No, he's good. He's cool. I'm going to go to hell for that one,
• 35:40
  anyway. And remember to get the floor so online through our website or our social media platforms,
• 35:46
  always good to get your, your feedback. So keep that coming. And we will see you real soon on the
• 35:52
  very next episode of Space Nuts. Until then, bye bye.
• 35:56
  Space Nuts. You'll be this to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 36:00
  You'll be more beautiful. Available at Apple Podcasts. Spotify. I have radio.
• 36:05
  Or your favorite podcast player. You can also stream on demand at bite.com.
• 36:11
  This has been another quantity podcast production from sites.com.