Latest / Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries / The Sahara Mystery: Unearthing the Origins of a Remarkable Meteorite | #362

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The Sahara Mystery: Unearthing the Origins of a Remarkable Meteorite | #362 · Space Nuts: Astronomy Insights & Cosmic Discoveries

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Hi there, Andrew Dunkley here, and thanks for joining us on another edition
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of Space Nuts. Lots to come today, we'll be talking about a meteorite
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that was discovered, not recently, they've known about it for a few years,
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but they've made a discovery in regard to this one. It was found
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in the Sahara Desert, so we'll tell you all about that. It's got
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quite a fascinating backstory, and we talked about it recently a courtesy of an
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audience question that of whether or not dark dark matter stars might exist or now
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the James wed Space Telescope is suggesting that there is one out there, maybe
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more than one, but we'll be talking about that potentially three and we've got
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audience questions, a couple of left field questions from Scott, Mikey and Graham
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will tackle all of that today on this edition of Space Nuts nine Agnia think
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Space Nuts three two Space Nuts and actually bought it deals good and joining us
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to go on and on and on and on and on about all of that
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is a professor we know and love so well, Professor Fred Watson, Astronomer
1:19
of Bar Hello, Fred, nice to talk to you again, Andrew,
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And yeah, I think we both can go on and we really respect if
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things. I've been doing it for a living for forty years. That's going
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on and on and on about little stuff. Yeah, um now we yeh
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by the way, yeah all well in your world, yes, thank you.
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Yes. We were down last week at Perula in West sorry in South
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Australia, which is right at the northern end of the Flinders Rangers, and
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we were there because they have just been declared a Dark Sky Sanctuary. A
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bit of a celebration that we were involved with, but it was very nice
2:01
to visit. It's an extraordinary place geologically. It was widely prospected after the
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Second World War for uranium. There is uranium that there is indeed a uranium
2:13
mind there, but there's but it's a natural environment that is highly unspoiled,
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apart from the road lead to the uranium prospecting sites which let you actually access
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some of the most extraordinary scene. Really, I think he's in Australia.
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Remarkable. It's really good that you and money can bring darkness to the world.
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So tell mission, that's right. Mardi styles herself because she is the
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princess of darkness. She styles herself a lady of the night. Well that
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might seem mean something else. Yeah, yeah, well but she's not that.
2:52
She says that I'm by a lady of the night. She says it
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always goes down well into it. Yeah, I can imagine. Oh that's
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terrific. So that'll be making a lot of astronomers very happy. Yeah.
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All right, Well let's get on to our first topic. And this is
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as you've mentioned, well, as we mentioned at the start, about a
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meteorite. This first story, this is a meteorite that they found in the
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Sahara Desert well a little while back, but they've been able to study it.
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And what's fascinating fascinating about it is that it's an Earth rock. So
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how can it be a meteorite? Well, that therein lies the question,
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Fred, that looks like it is the case, and it's it's a first
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of its kind. Fine, by the sound of it, it's certainly the
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first that has had this idea that it might have come from Earth tanked onto
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it. And it's still I suspect it's still scientifically a debatable issue still whether
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it did come from Earth, but the evidence seems to point that way.
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So what we're talking about is a meteorite. All the meteorites have names.
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This one is called Northwest one three one eight eight, very glamorous name,
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and it's I think actually it might be in a private collection. I'm not
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sure, but it's been analyzed by geologists as you would because people, you
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know, people who think they've got a meteorite usually want to go to a
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geologist to check whether it really is a meteorite. Yeah, because some of
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them are just stones, you know, they're not people say, oh,
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I've got a meteorite here, but yeah, well it's just a rock.
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It's very hard actually to identify them. Anyway. This one has been identified.
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It meets all the all the characteristics of of the meteorite. It has
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been clearly been heated on its outer surface, assumably by its passage through the
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atmosphere. But it's m geophysicists in the French National Center for Scientific Research they
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are basically investigating this. And what has led to the idea that it might
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be the first known boomerang meteorite is it's it's composition is very very closely matching
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the composition of rocks in the Earth, and it's it's what we call isotopes,
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the sort of exact atomic structure of the atoms, that the isotope,
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that the isotopes match what we find on Earth, and there is there is
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some really interesting what you might call nwanswers to this, because yes, those
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isotopes are matching, but some of them are their ratios. The isotope ratios
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have changed a little bit, and so what the the citists are suggesting is
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that that change has been due to the fact that this rock has been in
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orbit around the Earth and has been bombarded by cosmic rays. Because cosmic rays
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are subatomic particles. They they're they're in space, hence the name. We
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actually don't know the origin of some cosmic rays. A lot of them probably
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come from star explosions, but there's a sort of high enage background that has
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still I think, as people are scratching their heads, some of them are
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from Russia. I'm very aware of a cosmonaut named Ray. Should save that
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for the dad jokes that we do on Tiktoey. Maybe I should. What
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do you call a Russia about? Yeah? Never mites. Anyway, there's
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a suggestion that the isotope ratios have changed because of their bombardment by cosmic rays
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and the amount of change leads these scientists to believe that they've been bombarded by
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cosmic rays for at least two thousand a year, two thousand years, and
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possibly more like ten thousand years. And so what that is suggesting that this
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rock somehow came from Earth ten thousand years ago. Now, the candidates for
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an event on the Earth surface that would send a rock into orbit, which
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would orbit for a while and then eventually come come back again. The candidates
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are, first of all, the volcanic iroction, and we've had a very
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big one quite recently, the Hunger Tong Hunger Pie volcano in Tonga. Was
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it two years ago? Now it's a while. Yeah, I was getting
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on. Yeah, that actually hurled rocks, but not into orbit. Apparently
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the debris that was emitted by that blast peaked at around fifty eight kilometers thirty
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six miles, and that's not high enough to get into orbit. You'd need
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to propel it higher and actually give it a sort of horizontal velocity of some
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sort of swell for it to stain in orbit. Yeah, so these rocks
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went high into the atmosphere, but weren't high enough to actually become an Earth
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an earth bound or an Earth rock that is suddenly in orbit. So the
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other catastrophic or high energy event that they postulate, and they think this is
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the likely one, is an asteroid impact. Excuse me, because an asteroid
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impact generates huge amounts of energy and can send rocks very high. In fact,
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it can put rocks into orbit. And we think that's why here on
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Earth we see meteorites from the planet Mars. There are some meteorites which are
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called Martian meteorites, which we know have come from Mars, and we know
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that because of the traces of gas that entrapped in them, which match Mars's
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atmosphere exactly. So I think that about three hundred Martian meteorites known now they
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classified into different different types. So it looks as though what we might have
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is a scenario where something hits the Earth ten thousand years ago or thereabouts,
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maybe a little bit before that propels debris into space, some of it stays
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in orbits that that orbit gradually decays as orbits do, and eventually this bit
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of rock comes back through the other atmosphere, gets heated again by its passes
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through the atmosphere, and turns up as a meteorite in Northwest Africa, in
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fact in the Sahara Sara Desert where it was found. So yeah, a
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really interesting story. I suspect that there still it's still you know, a
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likely candidate for debate this tale. But the the person, you know,
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the person who leading this study is clearly quite convinced that that's where it came
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from. And how long ago are we thinking? Roughly ten thousand years so
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um, it's it's it's you know, we don't actually know where the impact
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that that the crater was. I think one of the one of the things
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that this team in France have looked at is to try and find an impact
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crater that might actually fit the bill for that. But excuse me, these
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are these are you know, the ten thousand years ago is quite young and
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if it would that they reckon, it would form a crater probably something like
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you know, twenty kilometers wide or something of that sort. Yeah, we
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have to be a massive impact to cause that amount of volofty it would,
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that's right exactly. And you know, most most of the craters that fit
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the bill on that millions of years old rather than thousands. So there is
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a there is a problem here, I think. Yeah, it sounds like
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it. Yeah, but it's still a really interesting idea, and it's still
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you know, even if even if it doesn't come from Earth, it's remarkable
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that it's it's It's structure and composition match Earth's rocks very well. Either way,
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it's a fascinating story. And I believe if it is, though,
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an Earth's rock that's been added into space and then landed back on the Sahara
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Desert, that that's a first. I mean, it's probably not the first,
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but it's the first one we've found. Yeah, haven't they also found
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Earth rocks on the Moon? Did we cover that? They found moon rocks
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on Earth? Moon rocks? I found something on the Moon. They might
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that. Not sure about that? Not sure about that that there's certainly moon
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rocks on Earth, like like the ones we get from Mars. They're created
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by impact crass or impact events. Um yeah, now hang on there.
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It is nine seventy one the Apollo astronauts found a chunk of Earth that they
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dug up on the Moon. Anyway, all right, I saw I'd heard
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about that somewhere. That's that's well done. Yeah, thank you, that's
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a really interesting one. Maybe who knows, maybe you've made a link there,
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then these two things might come from the same event, that's it.
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Oh yeah, yeah, that could be interesting. Yeah, yes, probably
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follow up on that because I didn't. Yeah, I'd forgotten that I'd forgotten.
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Yeah wow, okay, So which apollo did I say it was?
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Well, it's just nute seventy one, it's probably it would be fifteen.
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Yeah, now that the fifty sixteen sixteen was sort of ten, that's to
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anyway, just mother. But now it's definitely something worth pursuing. And I'm
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sure they're doing more and more examination of this particular meter right to see if
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they can figure it all out. But fascinating story the Boomerang asteroid, and
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yeah, if you want to read up on it, it's on the space
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dot com website. Fred. We've got a live studio audience, Brookie viewing
13:18
us today through various outlets Facebook, YouTube, and Rumble. One of them
13:24
is one of our regular listeners, Misty West, who's sent us a terrible
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dad joke these Misty, I thought we were bad. This is plain terrible.
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I thought about putting it observatory in my house, but the cost was
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astronomical. Oh, with that, we'll take a breath. You're listening to
13:48
the space and Nuts whether Andrew Duntley and Professor Fred Watson space puts now once
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again. The James Webb Space Telescope is in the news. It's been sort
14:05
of looking around going oh, what's that and that's how it sounds, by
14:09
the way, and it has found something that we did discuss recently thanks to
14:15
an audience question about whether or not there could be dark matter stars, and
14:20
we kind of debated it and thought, well, you know, how could
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it be a star if it's dark matter. Well, the James Webb Space
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Telescope might have discovered not one, not two, but three of these weird
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things. Yes, that's right, And we'd have to preface this by noticing
14:37
that this is entirely hypothetical. Yes, but the idea is that if you
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have particularly this might occur in the early universe where the density of dark matter
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it's probably higher than it is now. If you if you have a star,
14:56
that he's formed by the collapse of a cloud of gas and dark matter,
15:03
And that's how we know that stars are formed that way. Normally,
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it's the dark matter that that sort of concentrates the gas itself. That's how
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galaxies start. So you've got this web of dark matter that there's left over
15:18
from the Big Bang itself that has gravitational pool which attracts the hydrogen. Hydrogen
15:24
comes together, clumps together. I'm doing all this with my hands. Yeah,
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I can say that little listeners clumps together. People with very good hearing
15:33
would be able to hear you doing that. Yeah, they would have to
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have very good hearing indeed. Anyways, So and that clumps together and eventually
15:41
collapses into a cloud, a highly dense cloud under its own gravity. The
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pressure goes up, temperature goes up, it goes up high enough that you
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can trigger nuclear fusion, and then you've got a start. So, but
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what the hypothesis for dark stars is is something that's a bit different. If
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you imagine a mixture of the hydrogen and the dark matter and it's being it's
16:14
collapsing to form a star, your hope. But what happens is that as
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the dark matter is compressed, there is a hypothesis that dark matter particles can
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self annihilate, so that they come together and they just disappear and produce you
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know, electromagnetic radiation. But like you get antimatter and matter. Yeah,
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and so what they're saying is if that happens, if you've got this mixture
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of gas and dark matter that collapses and it sort of wants to be a
16:45
star, but the dark matter itself, just by it self annihilation, is
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creating energy, so it's producing light and heat, and that stops the hydrogen
16:56
itself becoming a normal star. So what you've got is this star that's that's
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in a way kind of frothy. It's it's being prevented from collapsing into a
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normal start by the amount of energy that the annihilating dark matter is producing,
17:15
and so it doesn't become a normal star. So the suggestion is that it
17:23
does become a start, but it's gigantic. And one of the numbers that's
17:29
being banded around is that a dark star could be ten times the diameter of
17:36
the earth sorbit around the Sun. So that's what's that. That's three three
17:41
hundred, three hundred million kilometers is the diameter of the Earth orbit around the
17:45
Sun. So if you multiply that by ten, you've got three billion kilometers,
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which is a very very big star in the end. Well, that's
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right, and in fact, that is the that's why these scientists who have
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been using that are looking at a survey produced by the JIBS web space telescope.
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Why they're excited by it because they they are they're going to be big,
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and they're going to be bright. They actually could be a lot brighter
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just because of the size of them, and you know the fact that there's
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still energy being being created. So what the scientists in question have done,
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and I haven't said where they are, but I think I'm right in saying
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this is at the University of Texas at Austin in the US. So these
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are scientists who have looked through James Webb space telescope data something called the Advanced
18:44
Deep Extra Galactic Survey, which is I think publicly available probably, and what
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they've looked for is objects that are very compact but have the signature, the
18:56
spectral signature of being a long way away. In other words, they're highly
19:00
red shifted. And so they found three candidates for that. It's really really
19:10
interesting. What you've got to do here, I think, is is work
19:15
out a way that you can differentiate between one of these dark scar that dark
19:19
scar dark stars which are very large, and a compact galaxy. Because a
19:26
compact galaxy might also look like this at the distance that the James Webb telescope
19:30
is looking at. But they think they're seeing in the spectrum of these things
19:36
evidence that they're not galaxies that they seeing, that they're looking at dark stars,
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and they would be the first candidates for such an object if it can
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be proven. And this clearly is going to generate much more research. What
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you've got is something that might give us a few more hints as to what
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dark matter is. Yes, and you know that's always a good thing at
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the moment, and the idea is a good one, and your ideas on
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the postcard, please, Yeah, it's it's it's the dark matter is an
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elusive material. It would be fantastic to be able to shine some light on
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it, if I can put it that way, by means of these dark
20:19
stars. I think the only thing that bothers me about this is that dark
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matter doesn't interact directly with matter as we know it. And yet if there
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are dark stars that are in existence, you've got a correlation between dark matter
20:41
and real matter and ones disturbing the other. So how can that be Because
20:48
the only way that dark matter does interact with normal matter is gravitationally. Yeah,
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it's the one thing nothing else, you know, it doesn't sort of
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talk to normal atoms, can't shake hands. They can't shake hands, they
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can't the dark matter can't block the light of brighter things behind it because it
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doesn't interact with electromagnetic radiation. But the only thing it does do is generates
21:14
gravity, and gravity, of course, is common to both both dark matter
21:18
and normal matter. And so that's that's the idea that you've got a gravitational
21:22
collapse of a mixture of these two things, real matter and dark matter at
21:27
a very high density. And that's that's the critical thing about this. They
21:30
collapse to a high density so that you get some shining of the stars,
21:34
but also shining of the dark matter itself because of the annihilation. It's a
21:38
really interesting story and one that I think could have ramifications. I think we
21:45
should follow this one as it evolves. Oh, I suppose the fact that
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they've found more than one makes it even more fascinating because a lot of the
21:55
time we can say, all right, we've found one thing that is a
22:00
planet called Earth that has life, but we've never found another one, so
22:03
we can't say definitively that life exists beyond that one example. But here we've
22:08
got three actual candidates. Yeah, that's right, So so really quite remarkable.
22:17
I mean they you know, again, there's still the possibility they might
22:19
turn out to be highly compact galaxies. But nevertheless, nevertheless, I think
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it's a very intriguing story. It sure is. We'll keep an eye on
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that one, and I dare say it's going to spawn a whole bunch of
22:36
audience questions. But it just seems to be the topic at the moment.
22:40
Dark matter, black holes, dogs and cats living together. People really want
22:45
to know about that stuff. We've got that too, No, Yeah,
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revenue. They're nearly talking to each other as well, I like dark Muster
22:56
and real latter. Yeah, but they're not touching each other. Well,
23:00
they did accidentally this morning. The cut. The cut still takes a very
23:03
dim view of the dog, but us that's usually how it goes, Fred,
23:07
Yeah, that's just that's just normal Earth life. Yeah, and so
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maybe dark Utter takes a dim view of real Nutter who knows it? Yeah,
23:18
highly likely, finally likely. All right, this is Space Nuts Andrew
23:23
Dunkle here with Professor Fred Watson. Space puts as would you we're shuffling along
23:33
rather quickly today. We've got to slow down. But we've got a few
23:37
questions. I'm going to hit you with the first one because it does dovetail
23:42
with that dark star theory. This comes from Scott. You're a frid and
23:52
Andrew. Scott couldn't here from christ Church in ZID. I have so many
23:56
questions, but I'll start these two. Could the reason dark matter doesn't interact
24:02
with light or build structures is that it hasn't gone through the Higgs field.
24:07
Maybe there wasn't enough Higgs to go around. Thoughts on that, mate,
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Also, what do you think about afterlife time? It took fourteen billion years
24:17
for this life, but felt like just now, when we're gone, it
24:19
could take trillions of years, but we wouldn't notice it until the next life.
24:25
Even then we could end up in a fourteen billion year structure. I
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could go on and on, but just your quick thoughts on an afterlife or
24:33
time when we don't exist? How fast it travels? Thanks friend and injury.
24:38
Wow, that's deep. It's very deep, very tide. Thanks got
24:44
I hope you're well now. Guess first up the dark matter of Higgs field
24:48
scenario. Yeah, It's a really interesting question, and I guess we would
24:56
assume that dark matter is affected or influenced by the Higgs field. So the
25:06
Higgs field is it's like all things in you know, this sort of sub
25:11
atomic physics. You can imagine it as a particle or a field, like
25:15
a force field. And the Higgs field is the elements, which is represented
25:22
by the Higgs boson, which as we know, was fouled in twenty twelve
25:25
by at the Large hundred collider called god particle. Yeah, it was not
25:32
a good name, but it was probably. So the Higgs field basically is
25:37
what gives other particles their mass. And we do know that dark matter particles
25:45
have mass because they have gravitational attraction, and so one would assume that they
25:52
interact with the Higgs field in the same way that normal matter particles do.
26:00
But it, like so many things about that master, this is something that
26:04
may still prove to be wrong. It might, you know, might not
26:08
be a certainty. But my assumption will be that, yes, start matter
26:11
is bound by the effect of the Higgs boson, the Higgs field in just
26:15
the same way as normal matter is, just because it basically has grovitational attraction.
26:21
It has mats. Okay, that was simple, well easier than the
26:26
next bit though, yes, after lifetime. Now I've got to confess,
26:30
Scott, I'm not quite sure where you're coming from here, but i's Alfred
26:33
nodding, well, so I must. Yes, I'm kind of reading between
26:38
the lads here as well from Scott. But I wonder if so. Scott's
26:44
point is that it's taken us thy point eight for the billion years for us
26:48
to evolve, if you include the period when you know the element elements were
26:53
being made by nuclear synthesis within within stars and all of that stuff. So
27:00
us he is saying, Okay, we've got a planet full of sentient beings,
27:06
conscious beings who can understand what time is, and we can look back
27:11
fourteen thirty point eight billion years and sort of see the history of the universe
27:17
and understand how we got here. So I think what he's saying is,
27:23
if we disappear as a species and there's no other sentient beings in the universe,
27:30
which is possible and a bit spooky, the next time you know,
27:40
organisms like us evolve, will they notice that the universe you know that might
27:45
be trillions of years down the track, will they notice that. And I
27:51
think the way I'm understanding this question is it goes to some other issues which
27:57
are about some people. People have argued that unless you've got consciousness, the
28:02
universe isn't real, you know, so that it's it's like that argument about
28:11
the trees fall down in forests when nobody's looking, that sort of thing.
28:17
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody's around, can you still hear
28:19
it and kind of thing, Yes, yeah, that's right, so you
28:23
know it's it's them, And it goes into it goes back to quantum theory,
28:29
where particles can exist in superposition. You know, we know that things
28:33
can be in many places at the same time and different states altogether until you
28:37
look at them, and it's the act of looking at them or basically making
28:42
them interact with the outside world, which is really what he's saying. But
28:47
it's that that that causes that quantum superposition to be broken and you can you
28:53
can see things in one place rather than many places at once. So I
28:57
think part of this idea is, Okay, if there's nobody here to see
29:03
the universe, does it really exist? So there's the clock still ticking?
29:07
Or do we you know there's the next sentient. Sentient beings that emerge still
29:12
only see thirty point eight billion years in the past because they don't know about
29:18
the trillion years that's elapsed since we were there. Yeah, a really really
29:22
interesting crush, fascinating and deep discussion, and you could go on for hours,
29:27
and it sort of reminds me of a discussion we had some time ago
29:32
about a theory that was put forward that our existence is basically because of our
29:37
consciousness. Yes, that is, you know, we only exist because we've
29:41
created this scenario, if we can call it that, And that's just too
29:49
mind blood weird. But it's years sound, isn't it. Yeah. But
29:53
the other thing I thought was, Okay, you know, we know the
29:56
universe is thirteen point eight billion years old, and if we've vani and you
30:00
know, it all happens again, will they who become whatever they become and
30:07
twinkle of time ahead of us know anything about the fact that we existed or
30:12
has it happened before? Yeah, that's right. They might not know that.
30:17
They wouldn't know that the universe was older though, that just by I
30:19
suppose, because you can you can looking at the red shift and things like
30:23
that. You can get the age of the univer Yeah. So it did
30:26
prompt another question in my mind. When the Big Bang happened, did we
30:33
in some form already exist, whether it was molecular or whatever, we had
30:37
to be around at the beginning. Didn't we to be created or did we
30:41
get created by a consequence of the reactions that occurred thereafter? Yeah, so
30:47
all the all the bits that well, yeah, in fact, no,
30:49
you you're rice in the sense that Okay, so we are mostly H two.
30:57
So two thirds of what we're made of is hydrogen, and most of
31:02
that came from the Big Bang. So your points is well laid that we
31:07
are big bangers. We we've we've basically got to atoms in our bodies that
31:14
were created a gazillion of the second after the Big Bank, because you know,
31:18
the Big Bang itself, the energies were too high for for protons and
31:22
things to fall, but soon afterwards they did. Yeah, um, well
31:27
most of it. It's H two. A couple of my mate of coh
31:32
that down, you know, helpit the all right, take your Scott,
31:42
you've I think you've opened up a can of worms. We're going to get
31:45
a lot of people on this, probably on social media having a bit of
31:48
a chat about it, because I've noticed with social media that the element that
31:53
the theory of time is often debated. Some people say, look, we
31:59
only made it up. Humans created time. There is this such thing,
32:01
so it just goes on and on and on. Thanks Scott. Let's move
32:06
on to the next question from Mikey, who's been a semi regular ass.
32:14
Hey friend and Andrew. It's Mikey from Illinois with another asteroid question for you
32:17
guys. Last time we had talked about you, guys, had answered a
32:22
question about I would love to talk to you guys, but we did not
32:27
talk in person. A question about nuclear bombs and asteroids, and it got
32:32
me thinking, if we did send a bomb to redirect an asteroid on Earth,
32:38
Ellie, the shockwave, I assume be what would redirect or you know,
32:45
cause damage to something here or in space. There's no air, so
32:52
what I guess I'm asking what is before that pushes the asteroid and send it
32:59
in an other direction if not air being pushed. I hope that makes sense,
33:07
guys, and thanks for everything now. Worries Mikey. I think with
33:10
the Dark Test it was kinetic energy, wasn't it. That Yes, that's
33:15
right, Yeah, it was absolutely But Mike is right actually because when we
33:22
talked about asteroid that the idea from observations that something like half of asteroids might
33:31
be rubble piles. Don't really remember that conversation. Yeah, And it turns
33:37
out the Emirates, Yeah, it turns out that they are more robust than
33:42
solid asteroids. And so the the thinking was, and I think we talked
33:49
about the idea that if you let detonated a nuclear bomb next to one of
33:53
those, there might be more resistant to being blown apart by the shock wave.
34:01
But Mike is absolutely right. There's a vacuum in space. It's it's
34:07
it's not quite a vacuum. It's an it it could be. Yeah,
34:15
I think today we're on a road, but I think dysons are rather more
34:21
than a vacuum there. You can mop them with pops and all sorts of
34:30
fantastic. Anyway, notwithstanding all that, we do get shock waves in space
34:37
because we see them all the time in gravitational waves, no real shock waves
34:43
through the interstellar medium. In fact, you know, in a way we
34:49
think that's why what trigger star formation is density waves, which should kind of
34:52
shock wave they're a wave passing through this rarefied gas in galaxies, But when
34:59
it comes to an nuclear detonation, I suspect the medium might still be the
35:06
very low density residual gas that there is in the Solar system. But I
35:10
really should look more at this because it could just be the blast of material
35:16
that is being expelled by the nuclear weapon itself, the fact that it's you
35:22
know, there's there's a blast of material, and the radiation itself, because
35:29
the radiation has a pressure, and the radiation that comes from and by that
35:35
I mean electromagnetic radiation as well as subatomic particles, that's all gonna effectively impact
35:43
the asteroid. I would like to follow up a bit more on that,
35:46
Mikey, because you've raised an interesting question there. So I'm going to put
35:50
an asterisk next to my nose and find out about just what the mechanism would
35:54
be when a nuclear bomb is detonated next to an asteroid. Why is going
36:00
to shift its orbit? Yeah, it's a good it's a good question.
36:05
Um. I wonder if it would be the same as setting off a bomb
36:09
underwater? Is it a similar concept, except you know, you've got you
36:14
do have a very dense medium there that you contract with. So yeah,
36:19
the water is pretty dumb. Um. Yeah, okay, good thing.
36:23
That's definitely speaking of pressure. And this is a sort of a side note,
36:29
but I've been on the radio the last few mornings and I've been keeping
36:32
an eye on the barometric pressure. Yeah. When when I was a kid,
36:37
they used to refer to very high barometric pressure as an anti cyclone.
36:40
But that you don't hear them say that anymore. But this morning, while
36:45
I was on air, I looked at the barometer and it was a thousand
36:47
and forty one, and that's really high. I've never seen it that high.
36:52
So we did some searching around and one of my audience members sent me
36:58
a link to the Bureaus some bureau data which indicated that the highest barometric pressure
37:05
ever recorded in Australia was a thousand and forty two. The highest ever recorded
37:09
in the world was in Russia in nineteen sixty eight, which was one thousand
37:13
and eighty two, which is extraordinarily high. Yet I thought, I don't
37:19
remember never seeing the barometer hit a thousand and forty in Dubbo where I am
37:23
in all the time I've been reading weather, and that's you know, twenty
37:28
thousand years, twenty something years. But the thousand and floyty wanted is what
37:31
it hit this morning? That just blew me away. We are certainly sitting
37:37
in a high pressure region. I'm going to be very rude and go and
37:45
see what my barometer says. Really No, okay, well that's not rude.
37:47
Let's let's find out because but the interesting difference I noticed was that because
37:54
I was looking at the weather station information on the roof of the radio station,
37:59
we've got a weather station right on top, and we're on top of
38:01
a hill as well, so where we're a little bit higher up than the
38:06
airport, and the airport reading even though it was high at Dubo Regional Airport
38:12
was a thousand and thirty six point six, So there was wide a difference
38:15
between the two, which is hard to explain because the lower down the lower
38:22
the pressure, I think, or is it the opposite, I don't know.
38:24
Sorry, what did we do that? One thousand and thirty seven?
38:29
So that's high. Yeah, it is very high, and mine's sort of
38:32
corrected for sea level. I don't know whether yours is trul don't if it's
38:37
not that it's even higher because you're sixty seven meetings. Yeah, yeah,
38:45
well the radio station would be a bit higher than that. Yeah. The
38:49
airport reading was what I was telling people when you stepped out. It was
38:52
a thousand and thirty six point six this morning, and I mean it fluctuates.
38:58
It's never constant, end, it's always no, that's right. Yeah,
39:00
who was going up down? Yeah, but I thought a thousand and
39:04
forty one was yeah, way out of there, quite quite amazing. I
39:09
just wanted to mention that, by the bye, because we're talking about pressure
39:14
and all that kind of Yes, great stuff, I love. All right,
39:19
Yeah, yeah, we've got one more question. This comes from Graham.
39:23
This one's a little bit out of left field for it. Hell,
39:30
it's Graham from London. I like your podcast a lot, listen to him
39:32
all the time. It's fair to say I'm a fan. I've got a
39:36
quick question. Do you think it's possible for a planet that evolves life and
39:42
there's a watery surface on a significant amount of it to evolve into a giant
39:47
planetary? Eyeball? I think you though, you know, mushrooms linking plants
39:52
together over enough billions of times? Well, U in the water, you'd
40:00
in and everything like that own city, and it sounds clearer in my head
40:05
and thatsbody come out of my mouth. But there could be giant planetary eyeballs
40:10
in space stirring across the vast m I think. I think it's clear.
40:17
I love the show. Keep going and hello everybody out there, think you,
40:22
thank you very much. Grahams is a fascinating theory as to whether or
40:28
not a life form could grow to a point where it became an eye the
40:32
size for planet, or something to that effect. We do have massive life
40:38
forms living on Earth, and I'm not talking about blue whales, but there
40:42
is a particular forest, the name of which escapes my mind at the moment,
40:45
that covers thousands of square kilometers and its technically one plant. Let's just
40:52
spread itself out so it does. You know, He's not He's not being
40:55
silly. This This can happen at least in that form, but could it
41:00
go to another level? It's um, it's the Great Barrier reef a single
41:07
It is classified as the biggest organism on Earth, I believe, but I
41:10
don't. But it's made up of lots and lots and lots of little creatures.
41:15
Yeah yeah, Whereas the forest is just one. Yes, it's one
41:19
plant. Yeah. And I think there was another story I read where I
41:24
think it was a fungus that was also quite massive that was found somewhere in
41:31
Europe, I think, and covers quite a huge amount of ground. That
41:37
might be the one I'm talking about. That's thousands of kilometers. The the
41:39
aspen tree, I think is the one, because um that's got it's about
41:45
eight kilometers long. Yeah, that's um. That's that's probably an example of
41:52
what he's alluding to. Um. So the Earth. So, a planet
42:00
like the Earth, even if it's covered with water, it's got to have
42:08
a it's going to have a rocky core. And so in the sense that
42:15
you know, imagining a physical representation of an eyeball, it's never going to
42:22
happen that you've got something that's hollow or at least filled with a fluid that's
42:29
like transmitting. So so you're always going to have a rocky ball with something
42:34
on top of it. And in the Earth case, it's water. In
42:37
the case of many other objects, it's water with a layer of ice on
42:39
top. So they are common. Yeah, And whether you could have an
42:45
organism that arranges itself in such a way that it actually becomes light sensitive.
42:50
And I suppose maybe a better analog might be a fly's eye. It's a
42:54
fly's eye is lots of little lenses that are coated on a very clish surface,
43:00
each twel with its old reset. There'd be something like that could evolve
43:06
on the surface of the Earth. That would be interesting. Yeah, very
43:09
interesting. It's it's a great question, mate. It would make an awesome
43:13
science fiction. Yeah, there you go, there's an idea for you.
43:19
I woke up last night trying to think of a new angle on a science
43:22
fiction story. But I've got other projects going on. Oh yeah, yeah,
43:25
that's right. It's not ready to write a new one yet. Got
43:29
to tell you a funny story though. I got an email the other day
43:34
from Amazon. Now, two years ago I released The Hitler Paradox, and
43:39
when I did, they wrote to me and said, look, we're not
43:43
happy with the cover. It's um you know, it's got a SWAS sticker
43:45
on it, and we don't publish hate symbols. Can you provide us with
43:51
another cover? So it did. They published it with the original cover anyway,
43:55
so oh really yeah they did, And so I thought, okay,
44:00
that was your call. Yeah. Well, last week they emailed me again
44:04
and said, we've quality control systems have picked up that you've got a swasticker
44:09
on the cover. We will not be offering this book for sale in Germany
44:14
as it contravenes German law. And I said, well, fair enough.
44:17
And I wrote back and said, you know you are the reason this has
44:21
happened, because I did offer you an alternative cover and you didn't use it.
44:24
The reply was, our quality control people have noted that there is a
44:29
swasticker on the cover of your book. And I wrote back and said,
44:32
well, can I upload the alternative cover again? And their reply was our
44:37
quality controlled me, I've noted there's a swasticker on the cover. I tried
44:40
one more time and said, can I change the carver? Our quality controlled
44:47
people have noted there's a swasticker on the cover and will not be for sale.
44:51
And jerk, I thought, they are they using AI to deal with
44:55
people, because it can't be human and if it is not worried about the
45:00
terminator ever happening, because it's a pretty dumber AI that answers the separate inquiries
45:07
with exactly the same phrase over and over again. Dumb as a box of
45:13
hammers. Anyway, I'm going to keep trying. It's been fun. Thank
45:20
you Graham, lovely lovely to hear from you in a really interesting angle on
45:23
that theory. And if you do have questions for us, please pipe them
45:28
through to us. Use some PVC and just roll it up in a piece
45:31
of paper and send it our way, or use a vacuum tube you need
45:37
a really big one, but it'll get here eventually. Or you can go
45:39
to our website and send us a message that way pretty easy. Space Nuts
45:45
podcast dot com or space nuts dot Io. There's a couple of ways you
45:49
can send us messages. And yeah, we look forward to hearing from you.
45:52
I'm sure you'll get plenty more. And while you're there, have a
45:55
look around. Don't forget about maybe looking into becoming a patron. And we
46:00
send a big shout out and thank you to all our patrons. We have
46:05
many, and it is greatly appreciated. It keeps the lights on. In
46:07
fact, I blew a light the other day and I'd like to get a
46:09
new one. Just about to go to the shop and get one, So
46:14
thanks for thanks for covering that for us. Fred. We're at the end
46:17
of the show. It's been a really fascinating journey today. We've had some
46:22
great questions and some great topics somewhere. So it's always good to explore the
46:27
limits of well, first of all, the limits of what I know,
46:29
which are relatively narrow of maybe the limits of what science knows as well.
46:35
Yes, indeed, all right, good to catch up and we'll see on
46:37
the next episode, I hope. So yeah, okay, thanks, I'll
46:43
be miffed if you have somebody else or instead. Not a problem there.
46:47
Thank you Fred, professor Fred what's an astronomer at large? And thanks to
46:52
Hugh in the studio who got up early for us today but we were five
46:54
hours late. And from me Andrew Dunkley, thanks for your company. We'll
46:59
see you on the next episode of Space Nuts. Bye bye, Spacenuts.
47:02
You'll be listening to the Space Nuts podcast available at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts,
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