Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / #455: Starship to Mars, Expanding Galaxies & Starliner Returns

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#455: Starship to Mars, Expanding Galaxies & Starliner Returns · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello again, thanks for joining us. This is Space Nuts,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: where we talk astronomy in space science.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: My name is Andrew Dunkley.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Coming up, we are going to look at Starliner yet Agaenjie.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: It's getting a guernsey in just about every episode of
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: late but well there's been plenty to talk about, let's
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: face it. Also another spacecraft, which is the product of
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: space X, looks like it's going to be doing missions
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: to Mars in the not too distant future.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: What's that all about?
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Well, it's one of those great dreams of a great man,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: and we'll see what he's got in mind. There's also
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: suggestions that our galaxies are bigger than we thought, much
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: much bigger.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Why how what's.
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: It all mean?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And a passing star might have been causing a little
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: bit of disruption around that trans Neptunian area. We'll talk
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: about all of that on this episode of Space Nuts.
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: Intact and guided in Channel ten nine Ignition Space Nuts
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: or three.
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: Two more new ones Space Nuts and I've reported meals good.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: And here to discombuberate all of that and to brush
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: off brush turkeys is Professor Fred what's an astronomer at
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: large bread?
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  Speaker 4: Although Andrew yes, you've you've just touched on the on
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: the nerve that's affecting us all at the moment in
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: brush turkey egg laying season everywhere, so you've.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Got you've got them scratch scratching around your backyard literally literally.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: Yes, they dig up everything to try and build a
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: nest and it's uh, you know, there are protected species,
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: they're probably endangered actually there so we're very fond of
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: brush turkeys, but what they do to your garden is
• 1:53
  Speaker 4: pretty serious stuff. So we just tried, I've actually tried
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: contacting their solicitor and things of that, so just to
• 2:00
  Speaker 4: see whether that has an effect.
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  Speaker 3: But we'll see.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, they're damn ugly though for it. I mean, they're
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  Speaker 1: endangered and they're protected and then Australian natives. But they
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: look like a cross between a traditional turkey in a vulture.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, that's actually a really good description they do.
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  Speaker 4: And you know they've got the brain of an ant
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  Speaker 4: as well, so they're not you know, they're not gifted
• 2:27
  Speaker 4: in I mean when you compare them with some of
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  Speaker 4: the other species that we have around here, particularly the
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: self a crusted cockatoos, which have got the intelligence of
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: a primate intelligence. Yeah, they are very extraordinary creatures. We've
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  Speaker 4: sent a note to them as well about leaving their
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  Speaker 4: droppings on our outdoor furniture, but that's still.
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  Speaker 3: A matter for the legal fraternity.
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  Speaker 1: Well, I'd be surprised if they haven't destroyed your furniture.
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  Speaker 2: They like chewing things.
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  Speaker 3: They do like chewing things. Yeah, but they've been o
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  Speaker 3: case I think that.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Yes, I love I love soulpha crested cockatoos. We've
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: got squeeens of them out at the golf course. But
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: they're not loved when you're just in the middle of
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: your downswing and one of them.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: Goes, oh yeah, that did they go?
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: If you're studying next one the nearly drive your ear
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  Speaker 4: drums out there, oh yeah, they're loud.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: They are super loud.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, Anyway, what wildlife issues aside. Let's let's talk about
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: Starliner for a change.
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: Some good news at last.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah. So, Starliner, the you know, the spacecraft that we've
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: been talking about solidly for the last two and a
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: half months, three months, actually years, has made a textbook
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: return to Earth at the end of last week, disconnected
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: from the International Space Station. All twenty seven of its
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: thrusters worked perfectly because that was the big ticket item,
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: whether the thrusters were reliable or not. Uh and yeah,
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  Speaker 4: backed away from the spacecraft, fired its rockets to re
• 4:09
  Speaker 4: enter and touch down completely safely, exactly on target, in
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  Speaker 4: a huge vindication, as some of the media are reporting,
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: a huge vindication for Boeing's engineers. And I think there's
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: been a lot of back patting all around, which is great,
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: including the two astronauts left behind on the space.
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  Speaker 3: Stations, Williams, and I feel I feel terrible for them.
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  Speaker 4: They were full of congratulations to the to the Boeing
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  Speaker 4: engineers who they've worked with very closely, obviously for a
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  Speaker 4: long period of time, not just while they've been in space.
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  Speaker 3: You know.
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  Speaker 4: They they they reconcile themselves to another however, many months
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  Speaker 4: cities in space, quite some time ago, and so they
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  Speaker 4: had already made peace with the whole issue. Yeah, they're
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: full of congratulations a NASA too. You know, we had
• 5:05
  Speaker 4: reports of a bit of friction between Boeing NASA about this,
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: and certainly there was some robust discussion we believe, in meetings,
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  Speaker 4: but nothing like what might be blown out by the
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: tabloid media. And so yeah, I think I think this
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: congratulations all, yes, it is.
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  Speaker 2: Good news and push.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: The two star Liner astronauts are still on the ISS
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and will be there probably till early next year, and
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: by the time this podcast is released, star Liner would
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: have been on the ground for probably nearly a couple
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: of weeks. But it's worth mentioning that they brought it
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: back safely.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: All is well.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: It just didn't have any passengers. It was just auto
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: auto piloted back to Earth, which is extraordinary in itself
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: the way they do that these days, with all these
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: different spacecraft. They don't need humans to make them go
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: up and down, but they do need humans to push
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: the magic buttons that are just there.
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  Speaker 2: For decoration, I think.
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  Speaker 1: But yeah, no, seriously, though it's good to have it back,
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  Speaker 1: there must be a collective sigh of relief. Okay, yes,
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  Speaker 1: let's move on to another spacecraft, and this one is
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  Speaker 1: the brainchild of space X, the Starship Mega Rocket, which
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  Speaker 1: they say in the next couple of years will be
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  Speaker 1: sending missions to Mars, initially unpersoned, but ultimately leading to
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  Speaker 1: people going to Mars. This is actually a plan that
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: might we talked about before, and people are saying it's
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  Speaker 1: a bibe duram. It will never happen, but they're certainly
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  Speaker 1: looking seriously at elong Musk's plan of putting a city
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  Speaker 1: on Mars is still going there.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, so that's right.
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  Speaker 4: That's the whole motivation for developing Starship Andrew. And it's
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  Speaker 4: quite remarkable. It is remarkable hardware. So it's two parts
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  Speaker 4: to it. The first stage booster, which is called the
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: super Heavy, and then the upper stage, which itself is
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: fifty meters tall, and that's the second stage, known as Starship.
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  Speaker 4: And unlike most spacecraft and certainly the Falcon nine series
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  Speaker 4: that Elon has developed, which has a first stage and
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: then a separate second stage and then the payload itself,
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  Speaker 4: with Starship, the payload is built into the second stage,
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: and so it is really quite different sort of architecture
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: for the spacecraft from others. So what we have is
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: a tweet from a baby pardon a space X sorry
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: an X whatever it's called message formerly known as a
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  Speaker 4: tweet from Elon Musk on on Saturday the last week,
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  Speaker 4: as we are speaking, a post, that's the word I
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: want a post A post times. Yeah, And so what
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  Speaker 4: he's saying is what his target timelines are for the
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  Speaker 4: first space staff Starship missions to Mars, and it is
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  Speaker 4: two years. That is exactly as you've said, uncrewed missions
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  Speaker 4: to start with with trials to land on Mars, and
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  Speaker 4: he's talking about that happening in two years and then
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  Speaker 4: two years later. And you know, he's partly limited by
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  Speaker 4: the physics of getting to Mars, which you can only
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  Speaker 4: do every twenty six months. That's when the two or
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: the orbits of the two planets bring them into the
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  Speaker 4: right kind of alignment, so that when you get to
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  Speaker 4: the other end of the trip, Mars is where you
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  Speaker 4: want it to be rather than somewhere else in its orbit.
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  Speaker 4: So that happens every twenty six months, so two years
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  Speaker 4: time and uncrude mission to Mars are perhaps several and
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  Speaker 4: then in four years time he's talking about sending people
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  Speaker 4: to Mars, and his quote is flight rate will grow
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  Speaker 4: exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self
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  Speaker 4: sustaining city in about twenty years. Being multiplanetary will vastly
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  Speaker 4: increase the probable lifespan of consciousness.
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  Speaker 3: As we will no longer have all our eggs.
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  Speaker 4: Literally and metaphorically actually says metabolically.
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  Speaker 3: On one planet that's got a boat.
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  Speaker 4: Look, it's elon Muscart is finest in terms of big
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  Speaker 4: vision stuff. I think the rest of the world is
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: looking on and saying, in your dreams, because there's so
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  Speaker 4: many unknowns about getting humans to Mars. It's something that
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  Speaker 4: we are simply faced with, real, real difficulties that brute
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  Speaker 4: force and ignorance is just not going to cut it.
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  Speaker 4: So I think we'll see slippage perhaps from that. But
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  Speaker 4: what's interesting to us as space watchers, of course, is
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  Speaker 4: seeing that technology evolve. Just a final footnote about this, Andrew.
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  Speaker 4: The starship has had four flights so far, and the
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  Speaker 4: last one basically achieved all that was hoped to achieve,
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  Speaker 4: and the fifth one is being planned, and I think
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  Speaker 4: the fifth one is the crucial one because they will
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  Speaker 4: return the spacecraft, this starship back to Earth on a
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  Speaker 4: soft landing, rather than just losing it into the ocean,
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  Speaker 4: which is what's happened before.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Look, people might be laughing behind his back and saying
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  Speaker 1: this is just a pipe dream, But if you don't
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  Speaker 1: have people that dream big, you probably don't achieve things
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: at the high end of the spectrum. I'm sure because
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: you don't hear about it in the history books, but
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: I'm sure people laughed at the right brothers and everyone
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: else was attempting to fly.
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  Speaker 2: Back in those days, I probably thought it was a
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  Speaker 2: huge jack.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: You'll never do it.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: It's impossible.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah wow now lookers, Yeah, and you know I mean
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  Speaker 4: ten years as well.
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  Speaker 3: Maybe.
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: Yeah, ten years ago it was thought to be impossible
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: to reuse a booster your first stage rocket, and that
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: is now totally routine. It was twenty fifteen, I think,
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: the first successful booster landing. And you've only got to
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: look at the track record with Tesla.
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  Speaker 3: Vehicles as well.
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: This streaming big can achieve great things.
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  Speaker 1: Notwithstanding the one Tesla vehicle that's floating out there in space.
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  Speaker 4: Some Yeah, the one that was on its way to
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  Speaker 4: Mars but actually overshot and is knowing the ice as well.
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  Speaker 3: I think. So that's a salutary left of.
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  Speaker 1: The Yes, yes, it's probably looking for a parking space station.
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  Speaker 3: Well with a charger on it.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: With a charger, yes, that could be.
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  Speaker 1: It could be an issue.
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: But look, I think Elon Musk is a remarkable man.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I know he gets ridiculed and gets he cops a
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  Speaker 1: lot of flak, but he has done some incredible things
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  Speaker 1: in the space science world that probably wouldn't have been
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  Speaker 1: attempted this soon by many other people. I know that
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: he's not the only one, but he's getting all the
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: headlines and he certainly knows how to get the story
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: out there and get the interest of the public. I
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: don't doubt that he will ultimately achieve this. Maybe not
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  Speaker 1: this quickly, but how quickly has he perfected these rocks?
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  Speaker 2: But what I do? Whatever?
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  Speaker 3: What if he did?
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  Speaker 4: What if in four years time we're talking about people
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  Speaker 4: walking on Mars with a.
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  Speaker 3: Staffship parks in the background. It's not impossible.
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  Speaker 2: No, it really would be.
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  Speaker 1: It would probably be the achievement of the century because
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: it would be twenty years ahead of when NASA plans
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: to be there, at least ten years ahead, and it
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: would be a private venture that would be even more remarkable. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: I wish him well and I hope we get to
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: see it. I think it would be fantastic, And yes,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I wish him nothing but success. I'm sure most people do.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And you've got to also think about the brave people
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: that will be doing this, because it's not like you
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: crossing the Atlantic for the first time, or crossing Bass
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: straight for the first time, or any of those kinds
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: of ventures that we heard about one hundred years ago.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: But it's.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: A giant leap, a much giant, a giant leap than
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: the Moon, and that was a huge jump, So it's
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: all very exciting.
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: Maybe I can good go ahead and sorry.
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: It will also reinvigorate interest in space science, so it'll
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: breed a whole new generation of scientists, and then it
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: will just keep going.
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: I think the I mean the point where I think
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: many space watchers and astronomers and philosophers, perhaps I can
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: put it ethicists where they diverge from Elon is sentenced.
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: The flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with a
• 14:54
  Speaker 4: goal of building a self sustaining city in about twenty years.
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: That I think transgress is what we the way we
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: ought to think about the way we treat mathers, And
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: it's part of Elon's philosophy of believing the Earth is
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: doomed and that we need to, you know, have a
• 15:15
  Speaker 4: have a lifeboat. Mars is not our lifeboat, and what
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: we have to do is fix our planet, you know.
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: And if you want to have a lifeboat, build it.
• 15:25
  Speaker 4: You build a megastructure rather than going and trashing another planet.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: That's my all this Now, I know.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: You've got issue with with occupying other worlds, but you
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: know the time will come where more powerful people probably
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: end up making those kinds of decisions.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: And it sounds like Elon's made his decision.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: And mining on the Moon, whether you like it or not,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: that's probably going to happen too.
• 15:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's I think a different issue I think
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: you can argue for from an ethical point of view.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: I'm not sure about colonizing.
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: Mars though, so, I mean, I have no problem with
• 16:08
  Speaker 4: humans going to Mars, but the model I think we
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: should adopt is a bit like Antarctica, where it's scientific
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: and research purposes mainly rather.
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: Than Yeah, but nobody, nobody can wholly own it or
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: occupy it.
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fair point.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, Yes, very interesting story and if you want to
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: read up on that, it's on the space dot com website.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley and Professor Fred Watson.
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: Space Nuts.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: Now, Fred, we have talked quite a few times and
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: received a lot of questions about the impending merger of
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies, but now there's a
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: story that suggests they are already touching each other due
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: to this discovery that the galaxies are bigger than we thought.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: How so.
• 17:12
  Speaker 4: So, and this is a great story because it's got
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: a very strong Australian connection. Scientists from Swinburne University down
• 17:19
  Speaker 4: there in Melbourne, and they it's interesting from a number
• 17:25
  Speaker 4: of points of view. One is that swinburn University has
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: a deal with the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The two
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: Keck telescopes are both ten meter telescopes are on Mona Kaya,
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: the tallest mountain. It's not really a mountain, it's a
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: shield volcano, but it's still one of the highest points
• 17:45
  Speaker 4: on the planet Earth on the big island of Hawaii.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: Mount Oka. So the Keck telescope is.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: A ten meter telescope that has very very fine sensitivity.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: It can penetrate deep into the interspace, not just looking
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: at very distant objects, but looking at fainter things in
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: the you know, in the near field, things that are
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: around our own galaxy, so other galaxies in the what
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: you might call the middle distance.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: So what this team has done is they've.
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: Used this sort of invested time on the one of
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: the two Keck telescopes and looked at the gas that
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: surrounds galaxies, and in particular a galaxy which rejoices in
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: the name of Iras zero eight three three nine plus
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: six five one seven. That's one of the galaxies that
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: they've looked at, and what they've done is checked for
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: glowing gas around the galaxy. So you know, we we
• 18:52
  Speaker 4: when we look at galaxies look at pictures of galaxies,
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: which many of us do all the time. What we're
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: looking at mostly is the stars and often glowing gas
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: as well. The pink blobs in the spiral arms of
• 19:04
  Speaker 4: galaxies are pink clouds of glowing hydrogen.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: The old joke is that hydrogen.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: Is just like people, when it gets excited, it glows pink,
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: but the mechanisms different. So they've instead looked at glowing
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: oxygen and looked at it at very very great distances
• 19:21
  Speaker 4: from the centers of these galaxies, and basically they find
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: it goes much much further than anybody had expected. And
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: this is a real achievement because this gas is ten
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: thousand to one hundred thousand times fainter than the brighter
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: parts of a galaxy, So you know, that's just penetrating
• 19:46
  Speaker 4: really deep into the fainter regions of the universe and
• 19:51
  Speaker 4: so yeah, so what they've discovered is that perhaps each
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: each galaxy has this shroud of gas that extends maybe
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: one hundred thousand light years into space. Now, one hundred
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: thousand light years is what we usually think of as
• 20:08
  Speaker 4: the diameter of the disc of our galaxy. So you know,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: if you basically double that in size, you've got the
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: new version of what galaxies are, like how big they are,
• 20:20
  Speaker 4: and they are colossal.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And is it true that because of this, they believe
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: that Andromeda and our galaxy are already touching technically.
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: Speaking, yeah, they yes.
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: I mean this Andromeda galaxy is about two and a
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: half million light years away from hours. If you've got
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: one hundred thousand light years of gas worth of gas
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: in each of those galaxies, they're not actually touching, but
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: they may well be interacting the you know, the extremities,
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: because gravity operates over great distances, so they may be
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: already tugging at one another, if I can put it
• 21:06
  Speaker 4: that way, with these.
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: Sailos of gas.
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I think it's very a fair point to
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: say that collision with Drumwind has already started.
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: Hold onto your hearts, every.
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: Wow, gosh, and we were sitting here, you know, we
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: were going to wait that couple of billion years. Yeah,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: we thought were in the diary, but I don't have
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to now it's happening now. I know these gas surrounds
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: have been previously discovered. We're talking, you know, seventy odd
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: years ago that they were discovered, but it's only because
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: of a new piece of equipment they've been able to
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: really analyze them today.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Is that accurately It's it's.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: Yes, it's one of the the Keck telescopes are equipped
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: with very very fine auxiliary instrumentation and one of them
• 21:53
  Speaker 4: is the instrument that's been.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Used to do this.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: It's it's basically it's got what's called an image slice
• 22:01
  Speaker 4: on it and that does exactly what the name applies.
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: It takes an image, slices it up, but then for
• 22:07
  Speaker 4: each slice you can get a separate spectrum. We in
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: Australia have similar technologies on certainly the Angle Australian Telescope,
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: but we don't use we don't slice the images. We
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: break them up into pixels by using fiber optics. So
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: it's a different technique that has the same basically the
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: same outcome. But the thing about the image slicer is
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: you can make them incredibly sensitive, and that's why they've
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: been able to get the spectrum of oxygen out to
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: these great distances from the galaxy at those incredibly faint levels. So, yes,
• 22:43
  Speaker 4: it's all about the technology that is now available on
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: these mouthless telescopes incredible.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: So beyond the extremities of the spiral arms of our
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: galaxy and well other galaxies, even without those sorts of structures,
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: there is a guess halo that stretches out that far. Again,
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: is that basically that's correct?
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And perhaps the most startling outcome of the research
• 23:12
  Speaker 4: that these scientists have done on this is that those
• 23:17
  Speaker 4: gas halos, when you add them up for all galaxies,
• 23:20
  Speaker 4: they probably make up, they believe, between seventy and ninety
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: percent of the normal matter in the universe. You know, Now,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: the normal matter is the stuff that's not dark matter
• 23:31
  Speaker 4: or dark energy, and we you know, we know that
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: we think of normal matter as being about five percent
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: of the mass energy budget of the universe, and we
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: usually think of that as being in stars, stars, of
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: the glowing stuff, the stuff.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: You can see.
• 23:48
  Speaker 4: But actually what they're saying is that much more of
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: it is in these galaxy halos seventy to nine.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: So does that change the ratio? Does that change the
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: formula of what.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: No, it doesn't.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: What it changes is the ratio within that five percent,
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: which is normal matter. So what we're saying is that
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: rather than you know, half of it being stars, now
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: for it being gas, most of it is gash. And
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: that's a new aspect of this whole study.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Mm okay, Wow, that's intriguing. And then they think this
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: applies to just about every galaxy.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's incredible. Quite a discovery it is.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: And yeah, you know, all credit to the team, and
• 24:42
  Speaker 4: just to give a give a shout out to the
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: instrument as well, the image light so that we mentioned.
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: It's called the Kech Cosmic Web Imager, and it's pretty
• 24:52
  Speaker 4: dramatic stuff.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: And it proves my theory forred that the universe is
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: built on baked beans.
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: Well that's naturally what what we what your mind goes to, really,
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: isn't it.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, does there's that much gas? Yes?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Fascinating story and you can read more about that on
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the Conversation website. This is Space Nuts with Andrew Dunkley
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and Professor Fred Watson.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: MUDs.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Let's get into our final chat, Fred, This one is
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: about disruption in the extremities of our Solar system due
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to a passing star.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: So what happened and when?
• 25:42
  Speaker 4: Quite a long time ago, I figured it might be
• 25:46
  Speaker 4: before you and I were born.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's so it's a good question.
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: Actually, I'm not sure that they can pin down when
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: this happened, but I should have another the paper, because
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: we've got the paper in Nature magazine which goes into
• 26:06
  Speaker 4: details of this very nicely. H And what what the
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: what they are doing? The scientists involved with this work,
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: who are principally in Europe. If I remember at the
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: University of Leiden comes into my mind. Yes, the Leiden
• 26:27
  Speaker 4: University is where this research has been done.
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: So what have they done.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: They've looked at the trans Neptunian objects, which we've talked
• 26:37
  Speaker 4: about a lot because they are implicated in the idea
• 26:41
  Speaker 4: of planet nine.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: And I'll get to that in a minute.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: But there this group from Leiden University have done a
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: huge number of computer simulations to see why these trans
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: Neptunian objects have such which highly inclined orbits. When you
• 27:04
  Speaker 4: think about the you know, the the orbital plane of
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: the Solar system, the one that the planet's lying there
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: that's pretty flat. I think Mercury is the one that
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: sticks out most. But the trans Neptunian objects are not
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: like that. And I should mention that the main Belt
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: asteroids mostly sit within the in the plane of the
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: planets as well, And that all comes about, of course,
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: because of the way planets are formed from a rotating
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: disk of material, the protoplanetary disc. But when you look
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: really a long way out to the trans Neptunian objects,
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: objects further away than Neptune, they're tipped over at all
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: kinds of angles. In fact, some are vertical almost, and
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: there's one or two that are so far angled that
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: they're going the wrong way round, they're actually going in
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: the wrong direction. And so the scientists at Leiden have
• 27:53
  Speaker 4: questioned what it is that has caused this, and there's simulations.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: Basically they tell them that a star of about point
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: eight solar masses, so eighty percent of the mass of
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: our Sun, flew past at quite a close distance, a
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: distance of one hundred and ten astronomical units. Now we
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: know that an astronomical unit is the distance between the
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: Earth and the Sun. One hundred and fifty million kilometers,
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: so it's one hundred and ten times that is about
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: sixteen point five billion kilometers, about nearly four times the
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: distance between the Sun and Neptune. So that passage of
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: a star, and they suggest billions of years ago, without
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: pinning down exactly when it was. What they find is
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: that that tipped up many of these orbits and disturbed
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: them so that we've got all these inclined orbits. But
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: they also believe that this explains some of the peculiar
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: orbits of moons of the outer planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: and Neptune. Some of those moons go the wrong way round,
• 29:06
  Speaker 4: and they've always been it's always been suggested that they've
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: been captured asteroids, basically captured trans Neptunian objects that strayed
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: into the inner Solar System and got captured by these planets.
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: And so what the laden scientists are saying is that
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: it maybe the same event when the star flew by
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: the Solar system not only disturbed all these outer asteroids
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: to put their orbits at high inclined angles, but also
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: flung some of them into the inner Solar System.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Where they were captured as moons.
• 29:41
  Speaker 4: So it's a very very neat story.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: It makes sense though, when you think about it.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: Absolutely it makes perfect sense. It's exactly the kind of
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: gravitational disturbance that you think.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: Might do that. So, oh, bless you.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Yes, let's Judy going off.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: That's with the good old hay fever. I guess still.
• 30:02
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Now, I mentioned planet nine a minute ago. That
• 30:07
  Speaker 4: great theory that I think was been had that around
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: into twenty sixteen or thereabouts if I remember rightly, and
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: that's saying.
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: That, yes, we've got.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: Very elongated orbits out in that out of Solar System region,
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: but there's some of them aligned in a way that's
• 30:25
  Speaker 4: suspicious that there's another planet out there. So the paper
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: that we're talking about now, which in Nature Astronomy is
• 30:32
  Speaker 4: called the Trajectory of the Stellar Flyby that shaped the
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: Outer Solar System.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: It's a very nice title.
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: That paper is.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Very briefly includes.
• 30:43
  Speaker 4: A mention of planet nine, and I'm going to read
• 30:46
  Speaker 4: the paragraph that it's in. It says, eventually, high inclination
• 30:51
  Speaker 4: trans Neptunian objects could be crucial when deciding between different hypotheses.
• 30:58
  Speaker 4: Retrograde trans Neptunian objects themselves, and that's ones that go
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: backwards in their orbits provide a challenge for the planet
• 31:05
  Speaker 4: instability model. Adding a distant planet in brackets, planet nine
• 31:10
  Speaker 4: appeared to solve the problem. This combined model can account
• 31:15
  Speaker 4: for retrograde trans Neptunian objects and with certain parameters, But
• 31:21
  Speaker 4: it says however, distant highly inclined trans Neptunian objects, if
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: they exist, may provide a challenge also for the planet
• 31:29
  Speaker 4: nine model. So what they're saying is planet nine actually
• 31:31
  Speaker 4: helps in their theory. Yeah, you know, maybe it's a
• 31:35
  Speaker 4: combination of both this passing star and a planet.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: That we have not yet discovered in the depths.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: So to put it in super scientific technical speake, we
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: had a Solar system sized bull in a china shop.
• 31:52
  Speaker 4: Yes, I think that sums it up very bovinely. If
• 31:58
  Speaker 4: I can use the car jumped over the moon, the
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: ball in the china.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Shop, all did the rest.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, it's a great it's a great story and
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: if it holds true, which it certainly, the mathematics works
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: could answer a lot of questions and add a bit more,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: a touch more weight to the potential for a planet nine,
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: which I like, I wanted to be there.
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: I do.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: Yes, if you'd like to follow up on that story.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a good read, but it's super technical,
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: so my brain went snap.
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: Nature dot com has that story.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: That brings us to the end. Friend, Thank you so
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: much for your presence. Yet again, it's always enlightening.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: Better than and darkening, isn't it, which is what we
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: talk depending on where you are.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, no great stuff on you. Thanks for having me,
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: always a pleasure.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Fred Wat's an astronomer at large. And thanks to Hugh
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: in the studio. We've got a question about here the
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: other day. I'll try and tackle that in a future episode.
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: And from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. Catch
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: you on the very next episode of Space Nuts.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: Bye bye. You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Available at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, or your favorite podcast player.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: You can also stream on demand at bytes dot com.
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: This has been another quality podcast production from nights dot com.