Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / Origins of Life, Mars Missions & Cosmic Measurements: #490 - Q&A Edition

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Origins of Life, Mars Missions & Cosmic Measurements: #490 - Q&A Edition · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi there, thanks for joining us. This is a Q
0:02
Speaker 1: and a edition of Space Nuts. My name is Andrew Dunkley,
0:05
Speaker 1: so good to have your company. Coming up, we are
0:08
Speaker 1: going to answer a question from Christian about the origins
0:11
Speaker 1: of life. We talked about that sort of in the
0:14
Speaker 1: last episode. Well, there's a question on the table from
0:18
Speaker 1: the audience. Rennie wants to know about the pitfalls of
0:21
Speaker 1: traveling to Mars. Aside from being next to Elon Musk,
0:25
Speaker 1: there are other things to consider. Lawrence is asking how
0:29
Speaker 1: we judge distances in space, and Lee wants to know
0:33
Speaker 1: about whether or not there's a possibility in the future
0:36
Speaker 1: of James web Space Telescopes two and three. That's all
0:40
Speaker 1: coming up on this edition of Space Nuts fifteen, Channel
0:46
Speaker 1: ten nine Ignition Space Nuts or three two Space Nuts
0:57
Speaker 1: as can I reported Neil Goods and in the stead
1:01
Speaker 1: of Professor Fred Watson, we are again joined by Johnty Horner,
1:04
Speaker 1: Professor of Astrophysics. Hi, Johnny, Hey, how are you going?
1:08
Speaker 1: I am well, good to see you again. We have
1:12
Speaker 1: got plenty of questions to answer.
1:13
Speaker 2: They're all text questions today.
1:16
Speaker 1: I didn't get the audio questions in time, but we'll
1:18
Speaker 1: save them up for future episodes, and we might as
1:22
Speaker 1: well get straight into it, shall we.
1:24
Speaker 2: All Right, Happy New Year.
1:26
Speaker 1: I've been listening to your podcast regularly for over five
1:29
Speaker 1: years now. Well you know, some people go to prison.
1:32
Speaker 1: You did that, and it's been a source of inspiration
1:35
Speaker 1: for me. In fact, it partly motivated the work I
1:39
Speaker 1: currently do, which is why I wanted to share some
1:43
Speaker 1: exciting news with you. We've finally published our findings in
1:47
Speaker 1: the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Our study
1:52
Speaker 1: explores the origins of life and argues for its significant
1:56
Speaker 1: implications not only for Earth, but for other planetary's across
2:00
Speaker 1: the universe. I'd be thrilled to hear your thoughts on it.
2:05
Speaker 1: Freds mentioned my colleague Juan Manuel Garcia Ruez's earlier work
2:10
Speaker 1: a few times on the podcast. Recently, we embarked on
2:13
Speaker 1: an exciting new project collaborating with the XOMRS science team
2:18
Speaker 1: at the European Space Agency. It's an incredibly stimulating area
2:23
Speaker 1: of research and I hope it piques your interest. And
2:26
Speaker 1: that comes from Christian And forgive me if I mispronounce
2:29
Speaker 1: your surname Christian Gene Wine or Gene Wayne. I hope
2:35
Speaker 1: you know I'm close, but I'm kind of gobsmacked that
2:40
Speaker 1: listening to us kind of partially inspired this work. That's
2:45
Speaker 1: I never thought I would see the day where something
2:49
Speaker 1: we did could lead to something like that. Not directly,
2:53
Speaker 1: but obviously you know a few things we've said has
2:57
Speaker 1: got somebody thinking, which is what we hope to would Well.
3:01
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's fabulous, and yeah, congratulations to yourself and Fred
3:04
Speaker 2: by proxy for motivating him inspiring. I think that's fabulous
3:08
Speaker 2: and that's one of the real values of this kind
3:11
Speaker 2: of work before we dive into the awesome paper here.
3:14
Speaker 2: One of the important things with podcasts like this, with
3:17
Speaker 2: TV shows, with astronomy outreach in general or astrobiology outreach,
3:21
Speaker 2: is you don't know where it's going to end, but
3:23
Speaker 2: people get inspired. And I wouldn't be here if it
3:26
Speaker 2: wasn't for Patrick Moore doing the Sky at Night back
3:28
Speaker 2: when I was a kid. Yeah, and it's fabulous to
3:30
Speaker 2: see that impact and that, you know, just yeah, genuinely
3:34
Speaker 2: huge Hudosa and Fred for having such fabulous podcasts and
3:38
Speaker 2: clearly going out and inspiring people. So that's fabulous and
3:41
Speaker 2: it's lovely to hear this story. Now. The article itself
3:44
Speaker 2: is on PNAS, which is, as it says, the Proceedings
3:48
Speaker 2: of the National Academy of Sciences. The challenge with that,
3:53
Speaker 2: and certainly I quite happily recommend people have a look
3:55
Speaker 2: at the paper. But one of the challenges when you're
3:57
Speaker 2: publishing a journalist prestigious is that is that papers have
4:00
Speaker 2: to be very short and concise, which sometimes makes them
4:04
Speaker 2: harder to dive into. And I think the authors here
4:07
Speaker 2: have done a very good job of dealing with that.
4:09
Speaker 2: But it is a slightly challenging read if you're not
4:12
Speaker 2: banging the discipline. But I've had really through it and
4:15
Speaker 2: it's a fabulous piece of work and really really interesting.
4:17
Speaker 2: So what they've done is building on a really fabulous
4:22
Speaker 2: history called the Miliuri experiments. But this was the idea
4:26
Speaker 2: that people are fascinated with how life got started, and
4:31
Speaker 2: way back in time there was this experiment done which
4:34
Speaker 2: essentially attempted to bottle the atmosphere that the early Earth
4:38
Speaker 2: had and then pass electricity through it, essentially simulating lightning
4:42
Speaker 2: and UV exposure on that early atmosphere, and it showed
4:46
Speaker 2: that you could get some kind of pre bout chemicals
4:48
Speaker 2: forming from a very simple atmosphere in those kind of conditions,
4:52
Speaker 2: so it became very much a touchstone of early astrobiology.
4:56
Speaker 2: Went out of fashion for a while because people argued
4:58
Speaker 2: that the early Earth wasn't like like that, but recent
5:01
Speaker 2: study have shown that those kind of conditions probably were
5:04
Speaker 2: around were important. This work then kind of builds on that.
5:07
Speaker 2: They've done a similar experiment with a much more modern
5:10
Speaker 2: and much more new once set up and looked at
5:12
Speaker 2: the results in a lot more detail than could have
5:14
Speaker 2: been done all that time ago. And what's really interesting is,
5:18
Speaker 2: again with a really simple setup, they get quite a
5:21
Speaker 2: complex stew of different ingredients forming. You get this layer
5:25
Speaker 2: of stuff floating on top of the water essentially, but
5:29
Speaker 2: they've dug into that and what they've found that is
5:31
Speaker 2: that in that water relayer there is this what they
5:37
Speaker 2: almost describe as proto cells, these globules that are quite small,
5:42
Speaker 2: that are spheres with a membrane that are possibly hollow
5:45
Speaker 2: inside that could be you know, prebiotic chemical factories essentially,
5:49
Speaker 2: the places where chemistry can happen in really interesting ways.
5:54
Speaker 2: That's really interesting, and they're talking about these biomorphic proto cells.
5:58
Speaker 2: Now that's positive and negatives to this. So one of
6:01
Speaker 2: the negatives from this research is that when people look
6:04
Speaker 2: for evidence of the earliest life on Earth, or in future,
6:07
Speaker 2: when they're looking for evidence of the earliest life on Mars,
6:10
Speaker 2: what are the things they look for of these kind
6:12
Speaker 2: of pro to our cells, things that are a precursor
6:15
Speaker 2: to the cells of life we know. And the argument
6:18
Speaker 2: has always been that these are separate to the formation
6:21
Speaker 2: of the compounds, and therefore they could be seen as
6:23
Speaker 2: a discrete bit of evidence of the origin of life.
6:26
Speaker 2: And what this work is saying is that these can
6:29
Speaker 2: actually be something that forms concramically, that's the phrase is
6:32
Speaker 2: in the title, forms at the same time as those
6:35
Speaker 2: preboutic chemicals. So finding these globules is not necessarily evidence
6:39
Speaker 2: that life has begun, but rather that the conditions needed
6:42
Speaker 2: for life were there. So it's maybe saying when you
6:46
Speaker 2: look back at the historical record, this is not a
6:49
Speaker 2: definitive sign of life necessarily, but Mays said, be a
6:52
Speaker 2: sign that of the conditions for life to then develop
6:55
Speaker 2: in the future. So that's a little bit sad. But
6:58
Speaker 2: on the flip side, what it's showing is that these
7:01
Speaker 2: conditions where you can start to get the conditions needed
7:04
Speaker 2: for life to start could be quite widely distributed because
7:07
Speaker 2: this was fair as simple. These are the kind of
7:09
Speaker 2: conditions you could get on planets across the cosmos with
7:12
Speaker 2: similar conditions to the Earth. So the other outcome from
7:15
Speaker 2: this is that this thing that sets the scene for
7:18
Speaker 2: the emergence of life could be more common than people think.
7:22
Speaker 2: That places where you've got oceans and atmospheres like this
7:25
Speaker 2: could get these proto cells, these globules, the actors, accelerators,
7:30
Speaker 2: incubators for advanced chemistry that could be more common through
7:34
Speaker 2: the cosmos, and therefore the scope for finding life out
7:37
Speaker 2: there could be greater than we thought. So it's a
7:40
Speaker 2: really interesting piece of work, and I think the way
7:42
Speaker 2: that the balance of positive and the native outcomes is
7:45
Speaker 2: really quite cool. Now it is quite a complex paper
7:49
Speaker 2: to read because of the nature of having to be
7:51
Speaker 2: condensed for this very prestigious journal, but the results are
7:54
Speaker 2: fabulous and if you do get on Twitter and have
7:56
Speaker 2: a look at it, the entire presentation is available online
8:00
Speaker 2: and some of their figures are beautiful. Some of the
8:02
Speaker 2: images that they've got showing the globules and the microscopic structures,
8:06
Speaker 2: they've got a really beautiful and it's the kind of
8:09
Speaker 2: thing that you almost wish that back when Uri and
8:11
Speaker 2: Miller were doing their experiment originally, we could have had
8:14
Speaker 2: that same quality of imagery and results to go back
8:17
Speaker 2: and look at. So I think it's an absolutely fabulous
8:19
Speaker 2: piece of work, and I'm really interested to see where
8:22
Speaker 2: it goes next and how people react and interact with it.
8:26
Speaker 2: In other words, what research does expawn next. Are we
8:29
Speaker 2: actually going to get to the point where we get
8:30
Speaker 2: a distinct idea of where life began? And also what
8:35
Speaker 2: the difference between life and not life is? Is still
8:39
Speaker 2: not really a hard and fast definition of when something
8:41
Speaker 2: is life and when it isn't, which always makes my
8:44
Speaker 2: head hurt. I'm an astronomer, I'm not a biologist, and
8:46
Speaker 2: I remember one of the early astrobiology conferences I went
8:49
Speaker 2: to talking about life and somebody mentioned viruses and all
8:53
Speaker 2: the biologists said, oh, no, viruses aren't alive. And that's
8:57
Speaker 2: totally contrary to my understanding as a layperson, you know,
9:00
Speaker 2: as a generalist, as an astronomer. I was gobsmaked. But
9:03
Speaker 2: apparently my mass biological definitions, the virus is not alive.
9:08
Speaker 2: I don't understand how that works. Now it's again back
9:10
Speaker 2: to that old carrot about. You've actually got a spectrum
9:13
Speaker 2: from definitely not life to definitely is life, and we
9:15
Speaker 2: have to put the dividing line somewhere, but I don't
9:18
Speaker 2: know that there's a consensus on that yet, And that
9:20
Speaker 2: kind of feeds into this as well, and that this
9:22
Speaker 2: kind of work might help people figure out that process
9:26
Speaker 2: and therefore help them put a line on This is
9:29
Speaker 2: where we consider it to be a live versus not essentially.
9:31
Speaker 1: So.
9:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, fabulous work, and even better, I guess even more
9:35
Speaker 2: inspirational given the links to the podcast in the past.
9:37
Speaker 2: I think that's fabulous.
9:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm chaffed. I'm really kind of in tread most
9:42
Speaker 1: of the talking idea. But I have always argued that
9:44
Speaker 1: the recipe for life exists everywhere. You've just got to
9:48
Speaker 1: have it all put together properly and have the right
9:52
Speaker 1: oven to make it happen. And I've always believed that
9:57
Speaker 1: when you look at how life flourishes on Earth, how
10:00
Speaker 1: a weed can find the slightest crack and grow, I mean,
10:07
Speaker 1: it stands to reason that life could flourish anywhere in
10:09
Speaker 1: the universe if the conditions are right. Because we have
10:13
Speaker 1: learned that the building blocks of life all the bits
10:18
Speaker 1: and bobs that we need to establish life exist. They're
10:23
Speaker 1: flying around the universe as we speak, so it's not.
10:27
Speaker 2: A giant leap to consider that.
10:30
Speaker 1: You know, if it hits something that's exactly right, boom,
10:36
Speaker 1: you've got life somewhere else. I don't doubt it exists. Now,
10:41
Speaker 1: it might not be life as we know it. And
10:46
Speaker 1: as you said, what is life anyway? That the same
10:49
Speaker 1: question that the great George Harrison asked, And yeah, there
10:54
Speaker 1: is no real definition of what constitutes life.
10:57
Speaker 2: How do you you know when I was.
10:59
Speaker 1: A kid, I had a pet rock it could have
11:01
Speaker 1: been alive.
11:02
Speaker 2: You don't.
11:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, where do you draw the line?
11:06
Speaker 2: Especially real es set out there as well, So it's
11:09
Speaker 2: not like you're limited in space. We've got incredible volume
11:12
Speaker 2: of space and incredible depth of time. And what's always
11:15
Speaker 2: shruck me as interesting is the division between those who
11:17
Speaker 2: believe that life won't be out there and those who will.
11:21
Speaker 2: And I saw this one. I'm one of the members
11:24
Speaker 2: of the Committee of the Astrobiologist side of Great Britain,
11:26
Speaker 2: even though I left the country fifteen years ago now,
11:29
Speaker 2: but there's an active astrobiology community there and I first
11:31
Speaker 2: sat and going to conferences with them more than twenty
11:34
Speaker 2: years ago now, and astrobiology conferences are wonderful things. Bex.
11:38
Speaker 2: They's so multidisciplinary, so you've got learning in areas that
11:42
Speaker 2: you wouldn't normally encounter where you learn something. You've also
11:45
Speaker 2: got kind of sociological learning of the way that different
11:47
Speaker 2: disciplines present. You know, different disciplines have different color schemes
11:52
Speaker 2: which I'd never thought of. You know, I've been to
11:54
Speaker 2: talks by geologists that were pink text on a pale
11:56
Speaker 2: blue background, which made my eyes bleed. But you know,
11:59
Speaker 2: you get theseferences there. But one of the things that
12:01
Speaker 2: struck me early on was that the people involved in
12:04
Speaker 2: astra biology from the biology side were nearly all very
12:06
Speaker 2: young researchers, really passionate and excited, but because the senior
12:11
Speaker 2: biologists were convinced that life was impossible, and they thought
12:14
Speaker 2: that the search f life elsewhere was a fool's errand
12:17
Speaker 2: that you just couldn't have life. Now, if you think
12:22
Speaker 2: that the Earth is the only place in the universe
12:24
Speaker 2: of life, which you know, we've got a sample of one,
12:27
Speaker 2: so that is still possible, then you have to assume
12:30
Speaker 2: that life is so incredibly impossible that wear a flick.
12:34
Speaker 2: If you make life even slightly more probable than that,
12:36
Speaker 2: even if it is not impossible but just vanishingly improbable,
12:41
Speaker 2: vict there is so much realistic bect There are so
12:43
Speaker 2: many planets around so many stars, in so many galaxies.
12:47
Speaker 2: Even if life is vanishingly improbable, it must be everywhere.
12:50
Speaker 2: It just might not be close enough for us to find.
12:52
Speaker 2: And that divide is really stark. And it's a philosophical
12:56
Speaker 2: one because we have no evidence either way, and it
12:59
Speaker 2: becomes almost a belief structure. People believe that we must
13:01
Speaker 2: be all on our people convinced that we're not, and
13:04
Speaker 2: the only way we'll find out is by looking and
13:06
Speaker 2: by doing this kind of work. And I would love
13:08
Speaker 2: to think that within our lifetimes we'll know the.
13:10
Speaker 1: Answer when one can only hope. Yes, if you would
13:14
Speaker 1: like to find that paper, it's at p NAS dot
13:21
Speaker 1: org PNS dot or that didn't sound good, and yeah,
13:26
Speaker 1: it's it's.
13:30
Speaker 2: It's a long title, but it is really a concomitant
13:34
Speaker 2: formation of proto cells and prebotic compounds on replausible early
13:39
Speaker 2: Earth atmosphere where you are.
13:41
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's not a long read, but it is. Yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: it can make your brain hurt. But most scientific papers
13:49
Speaker 1: tend to do that. But yeah, and thanks Christian for
13:52
Speaker 1: letting us know and telling us that we had a
13:55
Speaker 1: tiny part to play in the development of your work.
13:58
Speaker 1: That that really excites me. And I'll make sure Fred's
14:02
Speaker 1: areware and he might want to talk about that when
14:03
Speaker 1: he gets back to our next question. This one comes
14:09
Speaker 1: from who is it? It's from Rennie, who is in
14:12
Speaker 1: southern sunny West Hills, California. Rennie tends to ask very short,
14:19
Speaker 1: sharp questions.
14:20
Speaker 2: On a mission to Mars. Would a spaceship.
14:22
Speaker 1: Traverse through the asteroid belt or would it travel above
14:25
Speaker 1: or below the belt?
14:27
Speaker 2: Yes, really good question. Now, the astro belt, as everybody
14:32
Speaker 2: imagines it, is between the obbits of Mars and Jupiter,
14:35
Speaker 2: So when we're going to Mars, we're still closer to
14:37
Speaker 2: the sunner than the astraid belt is, so you're not
14:39
Speaker 2: really going to be traversing the belt anyway. However, Mars
14:44
Speaker 2: is such a tiny, puny planet with fairly weeak gravity
14:47
Speaker 2: and sorry Mars, but it's true, but the inter readge
14:50
Speaker 2: of the astra belt basically almost of lapsed with Mars's orbit,
14:53
Speaker 2: and asteroids do cross Marser's orbit all the time. Mars
14:57
Speaker 2: therefore gets hit more often than we do. Fortunately, space
15:01
Speaker 2: is really, really, really big, and there's a experiment you
15:05
Speaker 2: can do that demonstrates this. So if you've watched great
15:08
Speaker 2: movies like Star Wars, you've got asteroid belts in there
15:11
Speaker 2: as a refuge for the brave, heroic enemies of society
15:15
Speaker 2: and being chased by the baddies. They're flying to the
15:18
Speaker 2: astroid belt and they have to dodge and we've to
15:19
Speaker 2: get through, and of course the baddies fail terribly, crash
15:23
Speaker 2: into things, and wee chair because at heart we're all
15:25
Speaker 2: horrible individuals. But that's what happens. So the kind of
15:29
Speaker 2: cultural tick from that is that we imagine asteroid belts
15:31
Speaker 2: has been incredibly densely packed with material. Now, if the
15:35
Speaker 2: Ashtoi Belt was like that, you could go out tonight
15:38
Speaker 2: or any night of the year and look up and
15:40
Speaker 2: the plane of the Soul system would have a band
15:44
Speaker 2: quite broad of the sky from horizon to horizon where
15:48
Speaker 2: you see no stars, where you cannot see due to
15:51
Speaker 2: when you cannot see Saturn because there's an asteroid in
15:54
Speaker 2: the way, because every line of sight would hit an
15:55
Speaker 2: asteroid and that would be glowing grayish because it'd be
15:58
Speaker 2: reflecting some light back to us. That'd be how the
16:02
Speaker 2: sky looks. The reality is that you don't see the
16:05
Speaker 2: asteroid belt. You need a telescope or binoculars to see
16:09
Speaker 2: individual asteroids. But to have an asteroid pass in front
16:13
Speaker 2: of a star and block its light to have an
16:15
Speaker 2: occultation is a sufficiently unusual event that astronomers will travel
16:19
Speaker 2: across the world to set up in the shadow of
16:22
Speaker 2: the asteroid to get data that tells you how big
16:24
Speaker 2: it is, what its shape is, by the shape of
16:26
Speaker 2: that shadow as it moves across the Earth. What that
16:29
Speaker 2: tells you is that space is mostly empty. The fact
16:33
Speaker 2: that it is so rare that one of these asteroids
16:35
Speaker 2: lines up with a star is telling you that essentially
16:38
Speaker 2: you're going to be fairly safe traveling through the asteroid belt.
16:40
Speaker 2: When you talk about there being more than a million
16:43
Speaker 2: objects bigger than a klometer across, you think space must
16:46
Speaker 2: be packed. But the actuality that belt is so sparsely
16:50
Speaker 2: populated these days that if you were ever to be
16:52
Speaker 2: stood on the surface of an asteroid and you weren't
16:54
Speaker 2: having to worry about how you get home or what
16:56
Speaker 2: you're going to breathe, if you're stood on the surf
16:58
Speaker 2: of that asteroid. Very few few other asteroids will be
17:01
Speaker 2: near enough to see with you an added eye. Space
17:03
Speaker 2: is that big. The way that you can evidence that,
17:07
Speaker 2: I guess is the fact we've sent all these missions
17:09
Speaker 2: to the outer planets and not one has come a cropper.
17:11
Speaker 2: But also when those missions want to visit an asteroid
17:14
Speaker 2: for a bit of added value, they've got to be
17:16
Speaker 2: very careful in picking their trajectory to get near enough
17:19
Speaker 2: to see something. Big. Space is pretty big. So in
17:22
Speaker 2: terms of this question, for a mission to Mars, there
17:25
Speaker 2: is debris in the inner Solar System that you'd want
17:27
Speaker 2: to be aware of, but you can basically just pick
17:29
Speaker 2: your path and go. The odds of you intersecting an
17:31
Speaker 2: asteroid are pretty much non existent, very very small smaller
17:35
Speaker 2: debris maybe, but the big you get, the less stuff
17:38
Speaker 2: there is. Even going to the outer Solar System, you
17:42
Speaker 2: just go through. You don't need to go above or below,
17:45
Speaker 2: which is fortunate. See obits of the asteroids are quite
17:47
Speaker 2: puffed up. You'll get up to thirty or even forty
17:49
Speaker 2: five degree tilts before the asteroid belt starts to when,
17:53
Speaker 2: and so that means you'd have to go very very
17:55
Speaker 2: high to get up and then get back down again.
17:57
Speaker 2: A lot easier to go straight through.
17:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And as you said, nothing's hit one yet
18:03
Speaker 1: that we've sent out there, so yeah, there's plenty of
18:06
Speaker 1: room to move through. And as you said, space is big.
18:09
Speaker 1: You might think it's a long way down the street
18:10
Speaker 1: to the chemist to quote a famous book, but.
18:14
Speaker 2: Yes, space is huge.
18:16
Speaker 1: Thanks Rennie. Great to hear from you. This is Space
18:19
Speaker 1: Nuts with Andrew Dunkley.
18:20
Speaker 2: And John D. Horner.
18:24
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Speaker 1: won't be disappointed. Now back to the show.
20:31
Speaker 2: Space nuts.
20:32
Speaker 1: Well, it's not Professor Fred Watson at the moment, it's
20:34
Speaker 1: Professor Johnty Hornefred's away and that means the mice can
20:38
Speaker 1: play Johnty. Let's go to our next question. Hi you chaps,
20:43
Speaker 1: Lawrence from London, England. Here, I have a question about
20:47
Speaker 1: how we map the night sky and judge distances accurately. Specifically,
20:51
Speaker 1: how can we make any kind of objective claim regarding
20:54
Speaker 1: the distance and positions of particular stars or planets when
20:58
Speaker 1: we know effects like gravitational lensing can actively disconnect what
21:03
Speaker 1: we see with what is actually out there. It seems
21:06
Speaker 1: that without any sort of unaffected control against which we
21:10
Speaker 1: make these judgments, it's not all some giant, if not educated,
21:15
Speaker 1: guessing game. Apologies if I've missed something incredibly obvious here.
21:20
Speaker 1: Love the pod, listen to it every day and to
21:24
Speaker 1: and from work, and congratulations Thread on the big step
21:27
Speaker 1: in your career. You're an inspiration to all. Jeez, chaps,
21:30
Speaker 1: all the best. That's another one I'll have to send
21:32
Speaker 1: a Fred, But yes, yeah, measuring.
21:37
Speaker 2: Things in space, how do we get it right? How
21:39
Speaker 2: do we.
21:40
Speaker 1: Compensate for gravitational lensing. I think we've had similar questions
21:45
Speaker 1: in the past. It's always good to revisit these things.
21:48
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and it's a good question, and we actually cover
21:50
Speaker 2: a lot of this when we teach asterronomy. So I've
21:52
Speaker 2: taught this, I've gone through it, and it is true
21:55
Speaker 2: that the distances you get are not perfectly precise. Yes,
22:00
Speaker 2: so we can't say that an object four million light
22:04
Speaker 2: years away is exactly four million. There'll be an uncertainty
22:08
Speaker 2: with that. But the way that we've got the distances
22:11
Speaker 2: worked out is a series of different runs on a ladder.
22:15
Speaker 2: That's the why it's often described the distance ladder. And
22:18
Speaker 2: there are different techniques we can use that find objects
22:21
Speaker 2: that are more easy to spot but are rarer so
22:25
Speaker 2: within our solar system, it took a long time, but
22:29
Speaker 2: people got the distances worked out. There were clever experiments
22:33
Speaker 2: that went on all the way back to the sixteen
22:35
Speaker 2: hundreds and even earlier trying to estimate the scale of
22:37
Speaker 2: the solar system. Famously ol Aroma back in the sixteen seventies,
22:42
Speaker 2: I believe it was did some cool experiments trying to
22:46
Speaker 2: measure the speed of light looking at the eclipses of
22:50
Speaker 2: the moons of Jupiter, and in order to measure the
22:52
Speaker 2: speed of light, he had to have an understanding of
22:55
Speaker 2: the scale of the universe, or at least a scale
22:58
Speaker 2: locally in the Solar System in order to make that happen.
23:01
Speaker 2: And that scale the distance of the planets from the
23:05
Speaker 2: Sun had got relatively well established by then, fans to
23:08
Speaker 2: clever observations using trigonometry and using little bits of things
23:13
Speaker 2: like trigonometric paddle acts. Now pedalas is going to become
23:15
Speaker 2: quite important. So within the Solar System, once you've got
23:19
Speaker 2: your ruler worked out, if you know the orbital period
23:22
Speaker 2: of an object, you know it's semi major axis, which
23:26
Speaker 2: is the scale of its orbit. We also, by observing
23:30
Speaker 2: from different locations, can get quite a good immediate measurement
23:33
Speaker 2: of the distance, even to things we've only just discovered.
23:36
Speaker 2: If you observe from two different sides of the planet,
23:38
Speaker 2: you'll see the thing move a little bit against the
23:40
Speaker 2: background thousand that gives you a distance. Now that technique,
23:44
Speaker 2: that idea of paddle ants comes in really important to
23:46
Speaker 2: measure the distance to the nearest stars, and this is
23:49
Speaker 2: what people were doing by the early eighteen hundreds. You've
23:52
Speaker 2: got people like you have three diric vessel were doing
23:54
Speaker 2: this way before the days of optical observe of photographic observing.
24:00
Speaker 2: Should I say this is all optical with the eye,
24:02
Speaker 2: but they were taking very precise measurements of stars against
24:06
Speaker 2: the background stars using the biggest telescopes of the day.
24:10
Speaker 2: And they use this technique culture inometric parallaxs. Now, if
24:13
Speaker 2: you're driving while listening to the podcast, don't do this,
24:15
Speaker 2: But if you' sat somewhere safe, you can do this
24:17
Speaker 2: as an experiment. Actually, see how it works. So if
24:20
Speaker 2: you put your finger up in front of your face
24:22
Speaker 2: and close your right eye and look where your finger
24:24
Speaker 2: is against the background. Then open your right eye and
24:26
Speaker 2: close the left, you'll see your finger move against the background. Yeah,
24:30
Speaker 2: close your fingers to your face, the bigger the movement.
24:33
Speaker 2: So that's trigarometric paddle acts. And it's part of how
24:36
Speaker 2: our brains help us do things like catchable that's surroun
24:39
Speaker 2: to us. We get a sense of depth perception. Now,
24:42
Speaker 2: what I want you to imagine is that without killing
24:44
Speaker 2: you or causing you pain, I'm able to separate your
24:46
Speaker 2: eyes and instead of them being a couple of inches apart,
24:49
Speaker 2: make them three hundred million kilometers apart, so I'm putting
24:53
Speaker 2: them on one side of the s of it rather
24:54
Speaker 2: sudden then the other. That gives you a much bigger baseline.
24:57
Speaker 2: And that baseline is enough that by stars, when you
25:01
Speaker 2: look at them through a telescope, will appay to move
25:03
Speaker 2: against the background stars in just the same way that
25:05
Speaker 2: your finger does when you look from the left either
25:07
Speaker 2: right eye. So that gives us a way to measure
25:10
Speaker 2: the distance to those stars. So long as we know
25:12
Speaker 2: the distance that the Earth has moved, that's a distance
25:15
Speaker 2: of the Earth from the Sun. So if we know
25:16
Speaker 2: the size of the baseline, we know the angle that
25:19
Speaker 2: the stars moving through. Fairly simple trigonometry allows you to
25:23
Speaker 2: calculate the distance, and that gives us a distance to
25:26
Speaker 2: the nearest stars. And the better your telescope, the better
25:28
Speaker 2: your facility, the more accurately you can measure that, which
25:32
Speaker 2: is why the GEY emission at the minute is so incredible.
25:35
Speaker 2: The Gey emission is this spacecraft floating around out there
25:37
Speaker 2: in space with an incredibly precise camera that is, among
25:41
Speaker 2: many other things, measuring the parallats and the proper motion
25:45
Speaker 2: of about two billion with a b two billion stars.
25:49
Speaker 2: That's depending on the number us a half a percent
25:53
Speaker 2: to one percent of all stars in our galaxy will
25:56
Speaker 2: be able to have their distance measured by this spacecraft.
26:00
Speaker 2: But eventually things get so far away that you can't
26:03
Speaker 2: use padallax anymore. They just moved too little for you
26:05
Speaker 2: to measure it. How then do you get the distance
26:08
Speaker 2: to the next subject. Well, you go back to the
26:11
Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds, and you had a great astronomer, I
26:14
Speaker 2: think it was Henrietta Levitt who did this fabulous, fabulous
26:18
Speaker 2: work as one of the calculators, one of the astronomers
26:22
Speaker 2: at a great American observatory, and she was looking at
26:25
Speaker 2: photographic plates of the large Magelanic Cloud, which is one
26:28
Speaker 2: of our satellite galaxies, and studying them. And what she
26:32
Speaker 2: realized was that there was a group of variable stars
26:35
Speaker 2: which we call the Seafeed variables after Delta Cephi, which
26:38
Speaker 2: is the brightest one in the sky, that were all
26:41
Speaker 2: varying periodically. They were getting brighter and fainter. But the
26:46
Speaker 2: stars that were the same brightness that were varying this
26:49
Speaker 2: way also varied with the same period. Now, because all
26:51
Speaker 2: these stars were in the same galaxy a long way away,
26:54
Speaker 2: they were essentially at the same distance. The size of
26:57
Speaker 2: that galaxy compared to its distance is quite small. Stars
27:00
Speaker 2: she's studying in that field of view in that galaxy
27:03
Speaker 2: were effectively the same distance. The stars that looked fainter
27:08
Speaker 2: actually were fainter, and the stars that looked brighter actually
27:11
Speaker 2: were intrinsically brighter. And what she found was that there
27:14
Speaker 2: was a relationship between the period of these oscillations and
27:17
Speaker 2: the brightness, which is brilliant. What that means is if
27:21
Speaker 2: you see a star oscillating in this way and you
27:24
Speaker 2: measure its period, you know intrinsically how bright it is,
27:29
Speaker 2: and you know how bright it is in the sky,
27:31
Speaker 2: So that allows you to work out its distance as
27:33
Speaker 2: an equation we can use which allows you to compare
27:36
Speaker 2: the true brightness and the observed brightness. So that gives
27:40
Speaker 2: you an independent measure of distance that tells you which
27:42
Speaker 2: of these stars are closer or further away across the sky.
27:45
Speaker 2: But you need to calibrate that. You can say that
27:48
Speaker 2: one star is closer than another, but until you know
27:50
Speaker 2: the distance of one of the stars, that's not really useful.
27:54
Speaker 2: But fortunately, the very closest of these sephored variable stars
27:58
Speaker 2: are close enough to also measure the distance with paddle aps,
28:01
Speaker 2: so that gives you a way to quantify a scale. Now,
28:05
Speaker 2: these are quite bright steles, so you can even see
28:07
Speaker 2: them in nearby galaxies, So that gives you another wrung
28:10
Speaker 2: on the distance ladder. And you can see these seals,
28:13
Speaker 2: you can spot them. You can measure their variability, which
28:16
Speaker 2: tells you how luminous are, how intrinsically bright they are,
28:19
Speaker 2: And you can measure how bright they appear and use
28:21
Speaker 2: that to get the distance, and that gets you out
28:23
Speaker 2: a bit further. But then again they get too fent
28:26
Speaker 2: you can't see them. But there are some types of
28:29
Speaker 2: super and over explosion that it turns out, are very
28:33
Speaker 2: very regular in their peak luminosity, how much light they
28:35
Speaker 2: give off. So if you see a super and over
28:38
Speaker 2: behave in a certain way can identify it's one of
28:40
Speaker 2: these kind of supernovay. Then that tells you you know
28:44
Speaker 2: exactly how luminous it got. And once again you can
28:46
Speaker 2: measure the brightness as we see it. Put the two
28:49
Speaker 2: together to get the distance. With those, we can use
28:52
Speaker 2: the see fed variables to set the standard. These standard candles,
28:56
Speaker 2: you can get the distance of us super and ova
28:58
Speaker 2: and that gives you a distance scale. So there are
29:02
Speaker 2: other ladders, other rungs on this ladder, but that's the
29:05
Speaker 2: essential way it works. Now, it's not perfect. There are
29:09
Speaker 2: uncertainties that accumulate as you go further and further away.
29:13
Speaker 2: So the more distant something is from us, the larger
29:16
Speaker 2: the uncertainty on its distance will be. So for objects
29:19
Speaker 2: in the Solar System, we know the distances with incredible
29:22
Speaker 2: accuracy nowadays, particularly for the objects we've studied really well.
29:25
Speaker 2: The nearest stars. Again, we know that very very accurately,
29:29
Speaker 2: but not as precisely as we know the distance to
29:32
Speaker 2: the objects in the Solar System. And the further you go,
29:35
Speaker 2: the bigger the uncertainty, the bigger the error gets on
29:37
Speaker 2: the measurement compared to the measurement itself. Now, all of
29:41
Speaker 2: these things like gravitational lensing and stuff like that interfere
29:45
Speaker 2: for some objects in some locations, but they're not the
29:49
Speaker 2: end of the world because they're a small subset of
29:51
Speaker 2: the objects and they are a small effect on the
29:53
Speaker 2: total of it. So if you've got and this is
29:56
Speaker 2: getting a bit further from my personal area of expertise,
29:58
Speaker 2: but if you've got a distant galaxy is lensed by
30:00
Speaker 2: fall ground object. The distance along the different light paths
30:04
Speaker 2: is still going to be very similar to it coming direct.
30:07
Speaker 2: You're only deviating by a couple of degrees off that
30:09
Speaker 2: line and then getting bent back. So even if that
30:12
Speaker 2: lights had to travel a little bit further, the uncertainty
30:15
Speaker 2: is still within all the other uncertainties there. So that's
30:19
Speaker 2: a part of the story as well, and we can
30:21
Speaker 2: observe these things now. One of the nice things is
30:23
Speaker 2: for some of the really extremely distant things that are lensed,
30:27
Speaker 2: that lensing gives us a brighter image than we will
30:30
Speaker 2: get if the thing in the foreground wasn't there, which
30:32
Speaker 2: has allowed people to observe this sup and ova in
30:35
Speaker 2: them to help give an independent confirmation of their extreme distances.
30:39
Speaker 2: You've also had a couple of quirkycasions, I believe, where
30:42
Speaker 2: you've got these fragmented lensed images, these beautiful things you
30:46
Speaker 2: see in some of the astra photos from things like Hubble,
30:49
Speaker 2: where you've got a distant galaxy with a lens in
30:51
Speaker 2: the foreground and you've got multiple images of the same galaxy.
30:54
Speaker 2: And I believe that san to be corrected on this
30:57
Speaker 2: that there has been a case at least once where
30:59
Speaker 2: AVA has been seen in the different fragments of the
31:02
Speaker 2: lens coming at slightly different times because of light paths
31:05
Speaker 2: of different lens. So we can even see the differences
31:08
Speaker 2: in the distance for the different images because of the
31:12
Speaker 2: asymmetry and the lens fact that it's not perfectly then
31:15
Speaker 2: to essentially, so there's a lot we can dig into there,
31:18
Speaker 2: and if you want to know more about it, it's searching,
31:20
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of galactic distance scale, the you know,
31:23
Speaker 2: the distance ladder, looking at the seafeed variables, and the
31:26
Speaker 2: story of the incredible scientists in the early nineteen hundred,
31:30
Speaker 2: the women who worked there and in this remarkable science
31:34
Speaker 2: is well worth looking into. Us while you've got people
31:36
Speaker 2: like Henriette to Leavitt, Annie John Cammon who did similar
31:39
Speaker 2: work at the same institute at the time, these kind
31:41
Speaker 2: of overlooked heroes of astronomy that did absolutely astonishing work
31:46
Speaker 2: and led to this knowledge that we have now.
31:50
Speaker 1: Wow, theger Lawrence, I bet you didn't expect any answer,
31:54
Speaker 1: But you've got plenty to work with. So if you
31:57
Speaker 1: go do your homework and get back to us when
31:59
Speaker 1: you've got when you've got another follow up question. But yeah, yeah,
32:06
Speaker 1: I mean it's a great explanation, and there's a lot
32:09
Speaker 1: more to it than meets the eye bombob.
32:15
Speaker 2: Murder Your Love through Space Nets.
32:19
Speaker 1: One final question, and this one comes from Lee. I'm
32:24
Speaker 1: listening to the episode discussing the nine to one subscription
32:27
Speaker 1: rate for the James Web Space Telescope's time. I understand
32:32
Speaker 1: that JWST costs a few dollars, but surely most of
32:37
Speaker 1: the cost was in tooling, contracting, et cetera. Wouldn't NASA
32:42
Speaker 1: have contract options to build additional systems, such as in
32:45
Speaker 1: the event of a launch failure. Since the tooling and
32:49
Speaker 1: such is already made and the science value is so high,
32:53
Speaker 1: would they ever consider consider building James Web Space Telescopes
32:57
Speaker 1: two and three. Just seems logical to buy in box.
33:01
Speaker 1: Keep up the good work, sheees Lee. I think when
33:04
Speaker 1: Fred and I were first talking about James Webb, we
33:08
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that they had to get this
33:10
Speaker 1: absolutely right first go, because there was no going back
33:13
Speaker 1: if they made a mistake. So that may well help
33:17
Speaker 1: answer the question from Lee. But your thoughts, Johnny, there
33:21
Speaker 1: aren't any plans.
33:22
Speaker 2: At the minute for j WSC mark two, mark three.
33:26
Speaker 2: It's interesting when you go back to Hubble that the
33:30
Speaker 2: US military has spare hubbles lying around, so there's great,
33:34
Speaker 2: great observatory coming online in a few years time when
33:36
Speaker 2: it gets launched. Nancy gresh Roman Telescope, I think it
33:40
Speaker 2: is that has its origin in the fact that hubble
33:44
Speaker 2: space telescopes in our old technology for the military, So
33:46
Speaker 2: that'sn't gone approached apparently, And told by the way, we've
33:50
Speaker 2: got three four spare hubbles lying around, could you use them?
33:54
Speaker 2: And the ones that the military were using obviously point
33:56
Speaker 2: in a different direction because they look down rather than
33:58
Speaker 2: looking up. I don't think that's the same story with JEDUST.
34:03
Speaker 2: And part of the issue here as well is the
34:05
Speaker 2: development time. JWSC famously launched about twenty years after it
34:09
Speaker 2: was initially scheduled to and the first discussions of first
34:12
Speaker 2: planning for JEDSC was actually in the nineteen eighties and
34:16
Speaker 2: it took until twenty twenty one for it to get launched.
34:19
Speaker 2: That's really challenging, and there is nothing in the pipeline
34:22
Speaker 2: to do it now. The idea of having the production
34:24
Speaker 2: line is something that has become relevant for smaller telescopes.
34:29
Speaker 2: We at UNISQ have this fabulous observatory amount Kin observatory
34:33
Speaker 2: where we've got a dedicated facility for finding and characterising
34:36
Speaker 2: planets around other starts, and we're able to do that
34:40
Speaker 2: on a university scale budget with our collaborators because for
34:43
Speaker 2: smaller telescopes, there are now companies who produce these things
34:46
Speaker 2: on a production line, and we're having essentially the muddel
34:49
Speaker 2: t forward revolution in telescopes, where for small telescopes people
34:53
Speaker 2: and by small telescopes here i'm talking telescopes with mirrors
34:57
Speaker 2: at seventy centimeters or amet cross so they're still a
35:00
Speaker 2: lot bigger than they typical backyard scale, but they're small
35:03
Speaker 2: compared to jws or compared to the Vera Rubin observatory,
35:07
Speaker 2: things like that. And there is sufficient demand from the military,
35:11
Speaker 2: from commercial interests, from astronomers, and from amateur astronomers that
35:15
Speaker 2: it's now sufficiently profitable for companies to do these things
35:18
Speaker 2: on a production line. And what that's led to is
35:21
Speaker 2: a drop in the cost of these telescopes of an
35:23
Speaker 2: order of magnitude, which lets us build these bespoke observatories
35:28
Speaker 2: that are tasked with a single task to do a
35:30
Speaker 2: single thing. The problem is that that production line thing
35:35
Speaker 2: is okay if telescopes that are seventy centimeters or a
35:38
Speaker 2: meter across. It's not telescopes at the cutting edge of
35:41
Speaker 2: the biggest in the world, the most complex in the world.
35:45
Speaker 2: These are relatively simple telescopes. There is no motivation as
35:50
Speaker 2: far as I can tell. It's not a good financial
35:53
Speaker 2: thing to say we're going to build a production line
35:54
Speaker 2: for jwsts because there's just not the market for them.
35:58
Speaker 2: The cost is so high the use case. I'd love
36:00
Speaker 2: there to be nine out there, but I would lay
36:02
Speaker 2: if there were nine j wsds, they would still be
36:05
Speaker 2: over subscribed by nine to one. Because there's just so
36:07
Speaker 2: much science that we want to get done. The focus
36:10
Speaker 2: is on the next generation of telescopes. There's a Vera
36:13
Speaker 2: Rubin Observatory coming online in the next year or two
36:16
Speaker 2: that'll see fest light that will revolutionize astronomy. I'm really
36:19
Speaker 2: excited about that. And that's ground based, but that's an
36:22
Speaker 2: eight point three meter diameter primary mirror, but an incredibly
36:27
Speaker 2: incredibly fast photographic lens, so it'll have it's like having
36:30
Speaker 2: a really fast lens on your camera, but it'd been
36:32
Speaker 2: eight point three meters across. That will let people serve
36:36
Speaker 2: there the entire sky once a week down to magnitude twenty,
36:40
Speaker 2: which is about a billion times fenter than the human
36:42
Speaker 2: eye can see every single week, and that's predicted to
36:46
Speaker 2: increase the number of objects we know in the Solar
36:47
Speaker 2: system my factor of ten to one hundred times within
36:50
Speaker 2: a year to do similar things for the rest of
36:52
Speaker 2: astronomy and things like that. Things like the games Web,
36:56
Speaker 2: which are really at the cutting edge of what we
36:59
Speaker 2: can do, tend to be one off because they are
37:01
Speaker 2: incredibly expensive if they require huge amounts of technology innovation
37:05
Speaker 2: to make happen, But they are also such an incredibly
37:08
Speaker 2: long lead time that by the time it's up there,
37:10
Speaker 2: people planning the next big things. And we're joking for
37:13
Speaker 2: space observatories about telescopes that want launch and silver late
37:16
Speaker 2: twenty thirty is early twenty forties. Now, nothing that I'm
37:19
Speaker 2: aware of is a direct analog for gems Web. It's
37:22
Speaker 2: probably worth having an a side here, and I like
37:24
Speaker 2: to talk about this. Do you sometimes get people saying,
37:27
Speaker 2: why do we spend so much money on this? Why
37:28
Speaker 2: do the US governments continue to give billions to NASSA
37:33
Speaker 2: and Shrudn't we spend that money on things like curing cancer?
37:35
Speaker 2: You know, yes, really the question semi regularly for me.
37:43
Speaker 2: What we as scientists always overlook is the fact that
37:47
Speaker 2: the motivations of governments to fund these things are not
37:49
Speaker 2: really the science. We always want to get asked that question. So,
37:52
Speaker 2: but it's awesome and we want to learn stuff and
37:54
Speaker 2: we're so passionate. And that's a really valid answer if
37:57
Speaker 2: you share that passion, But if you don't, it'sless. What's
38:01
Speaker 2: actually going on with NASA and with other governments around
38:04
Speaker 2: the world that are pumping huge amounts of money into
38:06
Speaker 2: this is that they're aware of the return that they'll
38:08
Speaker 2: get on their investment. To build James Web was ridiculous expensive.
38:13
Speaker 2: I think it's approaching ten billion US dollars. That's billion
38:16
Speaker 2: with a B. Again, that's a lot for government to invest,
38:20
Speaker 2: especially when you think, yeah, should we be investing in
38:22
Speaker 2: cure in cancer. But to do that, you're looking at
38:25
Speaker 2: solving technology problems that have never been solved, building cameras
38:28
Speaker 2: to make measurements with a precision that's never been achieved,
38:32
Speaker 2: and that drives a huge amount of technological innovation for
38:37
Speaker 2: the government funding NASA. The great majority of the people
38:40
Speaker 2: aren't at all interested in the science, but what they're
38:42
Speaker 2: aware of is that historically, since it formed without fail
38:46
Speaker 2: year on year, NASA has had return on investment of
38:49
Speaker 2: at least ten to one. So for every dollar that
38:51
Speaker 2: is invested, the return to the economy is more than
38:54
Speaker 2: ten dollars. And there is no other business that I'm
38:57
Speaker 2: aware of that has that return on investments. So commercially
38:59
Speaker 2: it may it's a lot of sense, but also for
39:03
Speaker 2: things like curing cancer. If you're a doctor who wants
39:06
Speaker 2: to cure cancer and you want to be able to
39:10
Speaker 2: study the human body, you're going to need better cameras,
39:12
Speaker 2: better detection tools, better software. But you're a doctor, you're
39:16
Speaker 2: saving lives. You can't say I'm going to let my
39:18
Speaker 2: patients die because I'm going to go spend five years
39:20
Speaker 2: developing a new tool that's not going to happen. But
39:24
Speaker 2: the tools that are developed for these astronomical things, for instruments,
39:29
Speaker 2: for facilities, for space observatories then find use in other areas.
39:33
Speaker 2: You know, I've got, you know, my pocket based fruit
39:35
Speaker 2: based device, my phone or other brands are obviously available,
39:40
Speaker 2: has a camera in it that when you take photos,
39:42
Speaker 2: they're awesome, and all the phone brands likely but the
39:45
Speaker 2: camera itself is terrible. You know, you look at the
39:47
Speaker 2: phone side on and you've got a tiny little light
39:49
Speaker 2: path to a sensor with mass produced lenses. The images
39:54
Speaker 2: that these phones make are actually absolutely god awful. They're
39:59
Speaker 2: terrible images because the optics is terrible, because it's cheap, reproducibile,
40:03
Speaker 2: very small, But they're god awful in a very predictable way.
40:08
Speaker 2: All the optics have the same flows from one f
40:10
Speaker 2: one to the next, which means in the camera software
40:14
Speaker 2: all of those flaws can be reverse managed out, so
40:17
Speaker 2: you go from a blurry kind of you know, a
40:20
Speaker 2: whole of mirrors type experience to a beautiful image because
40:23
Speaker 2: it's reproducibly bad. The detector in that phone, the software
40:28
Speaker 2: that's used for that image processing, all of that stuff
40:30
Speaker 2: that we text self and granted in our pocket has
40:33
Speaker 2: come from astronomy research, from the image processing and the
40:36
Speaker 2: imaging that's done by astronomers. And that's really why governments
40:39
Speaker 2: invest in this. For you and I am for the
40:41
Speaker 2: bulk of the audience. We just we're just in it
40:44
Speaker 2: for the research and the excitement of the discoveries. But
40:48
Speaker 2: for the people in powers, they see the benefits that
40:50
Speaker 2: this brings that are clearly very different to the scientific outcomes,
40:54
Speaker 2: and that's why it gets funded. And when you're passionate
40:57
Speaker 2: about something, when you care, you don't think about that narrative.
41:00
Speaker 2: You just talk about the excitement and the wonder, which
41:03
Speaker 2: is preaching to the converted, but the skeptical person down
41:07
Speaker 2: the pub who wants to know where the tax dollars
41:09
Speaker 2: are going in a time when we've got across the
41:11
Speaker 2: living crisis, telling them about the wonder of science isn't
41:14
Speaker 2: going to win them over. No, telling them about the
41:16
Speaker 2: other benefits they'll under sun And I think it's really
41:19
Speaker 2: impot to have those discussions, even if they're not the
41:22
Speaker 2: wonder that we all want to espowels, and it's good
41:25
Speaker 2: to have the reality of the other benefits as well.
41:27
Speaker 1: Indeed, yeah, well said the go lee. Probably not a
41:32
Speaker 1: James Webb space telescope two and three, but I can
41:35
Speaker 1: tell you for sure, And Johnny hinted at this over
41:39
Speaker 1: the next Gosh will between now and twenty fifty one
41:44
Speaker 1: and beyond, there are plans to launch twenty two twenty
41:50
Speaker 1: three space telescopes, so there won't be James Webb. I'll
41:55
Speaker 1: all have different tasks. One of them will be studying
41:58
Speaker 1: gravitational waves. Others will be looking at gamma rays that
42:03
Speaker 1: the lips on, but they're.
42:06
Speaker 2: Sorry, other's exo planets as well in their result yet,
42:09
Speaker 2: and it's games. Webbits are very multi use tool, so
42:13
Speaker 2: it's good for everything, but you quite often get more
42:15
Speaker 2: mileage by making a cheaper tool that's good for one thing. Yeah,
42:19
Speaker 2: and a lot of the facilities are designed for a
42:20
Speaker 2: specific task. Yeah.
42:22
Speaker 1: So in the coming few decades here twenty two to
42:25
Speaker 1: twenty three at least, space telescopes are going to be launched,
42:29
Speaker 1: So it's it's not something that's stopped at James web
42:32
Speaker 1: By any means.
42:33
Speaker 2: What I might quickly on that topic is actually hop
42:36
Speaker 2: off one soapbox and climb up on another one, Okay,
42:40
Speaker 2: which is the challenge involved in this. So you say,
42:43
Speaker 2: you know, next twenty years we're talking about maybe another
42:45
Speaker 2: twenty or thirty space telescopes to be on, so we
42:47
Speaker 2: might get a bit more than that. In actuality, one
42:51
Speaker 2: of the things that salent proponents will often argue to
42:54
Speaker 2: astronomers when a Sean must say, oh no, this sky's
42:56
Speaker 2: getting ruined and it's going to be damaging for grand
42:58
Speaker 2: best optical observatories all well, grand based observatories are absolutely anyway.
43:03
Speaker 2: Elon Musk can just launch all your telescopes to space
43:05
Speaker 2: and that's problem solved. And it just doesn't work that way.
43:08
Speaker 2: I mean, I did some reading around when this debate
43:11
Speaker 2: kicked up again. There are more than ten thousand professional
43:15
Speaker 2: ground based astronomical telescopes on Earth that are doing research
43:19
Speaker 2: that rollover subscribed. The smallest of them are things like
43:23
Speaker 2: up at our observatory at Mount Kent. At Mount Kent,
43:25
Speaker 2: we've got more than a dozen telescopes all actively on
43:28
Speaker 2: sky every night doing really good research. And the smallest
43:32
Speaker 2: of them are our seventy centimeter telescopes. We're involved in
43:35
Speaker 2: a space mission called Twinkle. Twinkle is looking at putting
43:38
Speaker 2: a seventy centimeter telescope in orbit to do in for
43:40
Speaker 2: red observing, and it's kind of crowdsourcing it and building
43:44
Speaker 2: it off the shelf. It's a new model of telescopes,
43:46
Speaker 2: which makes it hugely cheaper. That will cost seventy million dollars.
43:53
Speaker 2: Our seventy centimeter telescope on the ground cost us a
43:56
Speaker 2: quarter of a million dollars. There is just not the
43:59
Speaker 2: money to rep what we've got on the ground. In
44:01
Speaker 2: the space there is also not the capacity to launch
44:04
Speaker 2: a really top end stuff. You know, the very Rubin
44:07
Speaker 2: Observatory is going to be an eight point three meter
44:09
Speaker 2: mirror with a five point three meter secondary, crazy huge thing.
44:14
Speaker 2: The biggest telescope is a building at the minute have
44:16
Speaker 2: nearly forty meter diameter mirrors. There's just no way you
44:19
Speaker 2: could launch them though. Unfortunately it's a bit specious to
44:23
Speaker 2: come back and say we don't need to protect the
44:25
Speaker 2: nightscab because you can just launch all the big telescopes
44:27
Speaker 2: space we can't afford to. Unfortunately, No, we eat the
44:30
Speaker 2: ground best stuff as well, and the grand best stuff
44:32
Speaker 2: does amazing work. Indeed, it does this very well.
44:36
Speaker 1: Said again and Lee, thanks for the question. It's certainly
44:40
Speaker 1: sparked Johnty into action. But yeah, thanks for getting in
44:46
Speaker 1: touch with this, Lee, Lawrence, Rennie and Christian who made
44:49
Speaker 1: up our panel today with our text questions, thanks as
44:55
Speaker 1: always to you. And if you've got questions for us,
44:58
Speaker 1: don't forget to send them in via our web site
45:00
Speaker 1: because that's the best way to get them through to us.
45:02
Speaker 1: Whether they're text or audio, we take them all. If
45:06
Speaker 1: you want to put a question on a paper aeroplane
45:08
Speaker 1: and just throw it. It might get to us, you
45:10
Speaker 1: never know. And Johnty as always, thanks so much. We'll
45:14
Speaker 1: catch up with you again.
45:16
Speaker 2: Next time, looking forward to it. Thanks for having me,
45:18
Speaker 2: and you know, Cleose Goings to everyone.
45:21
Speaker 1: John ty Horner, Professor of astrophysics, sitting in for Fred
45:26
Speaker 1: on Space Nuts at the moment. And thanks to Hu
45:29
Speaker 1: in the studio, although he couldn't be with us today
45:31
Speaker 1: because he's actually waiting in line for his turn to
45:34
Speaker 1: use the James Webspace telescope. And from me Andrew Dunkley,
45:38
Speaker 1: thanks to your company. We'll catch you on the next
45:40
Speaker 1: episode of Space Nuts.
45:41
Speaker 2: Bye bye Nuts to the Space Nuts podcast available at
45:48
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player. You
45:53
Speaker 2: can also stream on demand at bides dot com. This
45:57
Speaker 2: has been another quality podcast production from no It's dot com.